After the Fires Fade
by Laluzi
Summary: Two months after the catastrophe, Alex Mercer is just trying to find his own niche in the world. Old secrets and new enemies are determined to make things hectic again… luckily, he wasn't that fond of the peaceful life anyway. -Disregards Prototype 2.
1. Slice of Life

**Author's Note: I don't own Prototype (no, **_**really**_**?) Also, I may as well mention this in advance. I've made a few canon screws; for the purpose of this story, Captain Cross is alive, and the Supreme Hunter was masquerading as a random mook on the Reagan rather than said Captain. **

* * *

><p>Some things in life never changed.<p>

It could always be said that the sun would rise in the east and set in the west, that you could never please everyone, and you would always have at least one annoying coworker. And people in Manhattan would always go about their lives, running to and from their jobs in droves, grumbling about taxes and slamming their car horns at the traffic that never managed to flow faster than corn syrup. Some things never changed, even when everything else in life did a complete one-eighty and overturned everything you ever knew.

The crisis that had wracked New York wasn't at its peak, but neither was it over, by any stretch of the word. A project enshrouded in secrecy had gone horribly awry through a mix of renegade members and poor security, and as a result, the residents of Manhattan had one day been brutally introduced to hell. A virus known as Redlight had spread through the city like wildfire, twisting people into mindless monsters in a matter of days. Residents and vacationers alike were trapped in the resulting quarantine, and were forced to huddle helplessly in the city as the situation deteriorated, going from waves of shambling archetypal zombies to brutish, hulking beasts with gaping jaws and empty sockets, and giant, skinless tentacles that forced their way from under the streets, shrieking weirdly human cries as they hurled around cars as if they were tennis balls. At the worst point of the Infection, about two weeks in, nearly ninety percent of Manhattan's population had succumbed to the virus.

And then? _Something_ had happened, but the details around that something were highly sketchy. Regardless, it was the stroke of luck everyone had been praying for – at its farthest encroach into the city, Redlight suddenly stopped its advance, falling into disorganized chaos amongst itself. Mere hours after the Infected had begun to scatter, an unexplained nuclear weapon had gone off in the Atlantic, only a few miles away. Panic had run higher than ever before – nearly everyone was certain that in the midst of both nuclear and biological terrorism, they were all about to die.

But they didn't. After that… nothing changed, and everything changed. The monsters were still there, and the virus still flared up in certain parts of the city, refusing to be entirely eradicated, but it did not spread as uncontrollably as before. The Marines and more shady special ops agents were slowly working away at the Infection wherever it was found, and life was beginning to pick itself up again in the battered city.

Things weren't _normal,_ not by a long shot. Many neighborhoods were in ruins, and others still crawled with the virus. Overall, the north end of Manhattan was more sparsely populated than the rest, and was generally less desirable to live in – the main military base on the island was on the southern tip, and in a city where the zombie apocalypse had become reality and was far from totally stamped out, people wanted to have a sense of security, even if that meant foul-mouthed and trigger-happy soldiers marching through the streets at all hours.

As such, many of the homes in Harlem had been abandoned, either by untimely death or simply fleeing to a safer area. But for the residents of number 604 in Liberty Terrace, the location was just fine.

The apartment was not the pinnacle of luxury, but there was a warm, well-used air to it, and it was clear that the shabby furniture and cluttered desks had been marked down as somebody's home. Like every other residential spot in New York, exorbitant prices didn't get you much in the way of living space – a kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom branched off from a moderately-sized living room, and that was all there was to it. A battered couch faced a television set, a thin film of dust covering the inert screen. Books and newspapers oozed off of a buckling coffee table, having given up hope at ever being forced into the jam-packed shelves that lined the walls. The packed ledges had a single break – a wide double window that gave a rather uninteresting view of the back of another apartment complex, but at least there _was _a window. On the other side of the room, a cluttered desk hoisted up a computer that looked much sleeker and newer than anything else in the room. In direct contrast, the swivel chair before it was torn, and bled stuffing from its back.

One of the apartment's two occupants was in said swivel chair, hunched over in an intense bout of internet surfing. Her knuckles above the mouse were taut and white, and her visage was bathed in the screen's harsh glow. Blue eyes scanned the computer with scrutinizing intensity. Her skin was smooth and full, but the normally soft angles of her face were thrown into fierce clarity in the alternating glare and shadows. Medium brown hair stood in spiky disarray atop her head, somehow managing to look stylish in its haphazardness. She wore a tank top and rumpled jeans, apparently oblivious to the dawning autumn chill. Her clothes clung tightly to her slim frame, accentuating her figure.

The other person was much less defined under his swathe of clothing. He was sprawled lazily on the sofa, his shoes propped up on the armrest and his one hand dangling bonelessly off the side. His outfit was probably too warm for the weather, and decidedly punk; he sported several layers, starting with an unbuttoned and wrinkled dress shirt that no amount of ironing could ever restore. Over that was a gray hoodie, and covering _that_ was a rather sleek black leather jacket with cuffed sleeves and some esoteric red insignia scrawled across the back. His jeans were faded, and his loafers looked extremely worn. All of the garments left him quite obscured; very little of his skin was exposed, and what could be made of his face, hands, and chest was a distinctly unhealthy pallor. His features were similar enough to the apartment's other resident to be a sibling, but only just. He was much bulkier than his sister, although not buff – the tightly coiled muscles in his limbs were only prominent when he moved. The insouciant flop of his unbuttoned jacket revealed a decently muscled chest, looking strange and out of place against skin that was impossibly far from tanned. His face was broader and more harsh than his sibling's; his brow was heavy, giving his neutral expression the look of a scowl. His cheekbones were lower, and his face was gaunt, lacking the youthful fullness his sister still possessed – it was clear he had a few more years on him, and the sharp gray shadows that shrouded his features suggested that that time had not been gentle with him. Colorless lips rested beneath a slightly pointed, sloping nose. A fringe of curly dark hair peeked out from the rim of his raised hood. Most striking about his features, though, were his eyes – slightly narrowed and almost predatory in their angle, they were an ethereal blue, more silvery than his sister's, and so fierce they seemed to glow. They stared dispassionately at the ceiling, as if all of life's answers were etched in the stucco – and he disagreed with them.

Overall, he looked human, except for the eyes. They were wrong. They had the right shape and maybe the right color, but they held a quality no human eyes would ever have – a coldness, a calculating, unfathomable logic. They were the eyes of a hunter.

And a hunter he was.

His name was Alex Mercer. It wasn't really _his_ name, nor was it the only thing he'd ever been called. Indeed, he had a plethora of names – Zeus, Blacklight, DX-1118 C, germ, murderer, killer, monster, terrorist. He was known, but not by any unanimous words; he was a presence, both ghostlike and tangible, that haunted the occupants of Manhattan. A vengeful specter, a demon from hell – something that could never be pinned down, but was undoubtedly and horribly real. Few knew what he actually was – even among the elite of the military, the most filtered and distorted remnants of the truth were scarce – but the fear he solicited was absolute. To them, he was death and destruction given a face.

Ironic, then, that what he'd come to consider his true form, the disguise that had been real enough to fool even himself once upon a time, went unnoticed among them. People knew him when he shed his humanity for blades and claws and chitinous armor, but they didn't know the real him - as real as something like him could ever get, anyway. They thought he loved to kill. And they were right, in a sense – he reveled in the visceral feeling of talons through flesh and the dominance of being an apex predator, the brief reprieve from his burning hunger. But he hated it too, sometimes even wracked with varying levels of guilt over the aftermath. He hated himself for doing what he'd been _made_ to do, for becoming nothing more than a weapon for an endless moment in time. The memories of the dead tormented him, crying out in horror until he too reviled himself for enjoying the act. How could he not, when an endless store of human memories told him that what he did was wrong? He couldn't help the carnal satisfaction that he felt, because that was what he _was_ – the anathema, the modified and weaponized version of the virus that had been released upon Manhattan, the embodiment of a plague meant to kill everything it touched. He was a formless shapeshifter comprised of viral biomass, something that preyed on humans, pulling them in, filing, and then tearing apart their identities. Everything from their defining memories to their smallest strands of DNA became a part of him.

But he was more than that. It had been said that he who fights monsters must take care to avoid becoming a monster himself. Alex Mercer had learned this phrase through his stolen memories, and knew through jaded experience that the opposite was also true. Through preying on humans, he'd slowly embossed their mindsets around his. They hadn't necessarily been good people – he'd killed some of the vilest – but they all thought he was something twisted and wrong, and now they were in him. They _were_ him. He couldn't escape that hatred, or blot out the families the soldiers had fought for, the children he'd left orphaned. He hated them for confusing him, for forcing him to care, but he cared nonetheless. They meant something to him, and it tormented him because he could no longer tell where _he_ ended and a thousand dead men began. But he acted anyways – fought to undo his mistakes, risked his life in the end to save others instead of destroying them. It hadn't changed anything. He was known by the persona he donned in combat, and only that… Except by the girl he shared the room with, who was quite possibly the only joy in his life.

To her, he wasn't a monster that should have never escaped its petri dish. He was just Alex; a rather disgruntled and awkward older brother that she was only a _bit_ afraid of. To him… she was everything, the sole purpose in his life, his only tie to humanity – probably sanity as well – and the only person allowed to see his gentle side.

But that deep bond also served to keep him from total honesty. Dana Mercer was twenty-one; technically eight years younger than her brother, but also technically twenty-one years older. She was blissfully unaware that the person she shared an apartment was not actually her brother, but something that had been born from her real sibling's cooling corpse. She knew of his… oddities, those could never have been hidden, but as far as she was aware, her brother was amnesiac – _true_ – a vast deal more likeable than he'd been before – _also true_ – and still fundamentally human.

Not so true.

The real, original Alex Mercer was dead, his last gesture having been a maddened 'fuck you' to the world. That Mercer was a different entity, a different person; one who shared virtually nothing more than appearance with the newer version. Perhaps he'd even been more of a monster than Alex 2.0. He'd wanted to see the world burn just because he was no longer allowed to live in it. He'd meant to kill everyone. Everyone, even his sister. His little sister…

He knew he couldn't lie forever, but… he shifted his head, turning to look over at the one person he cared about. She was an investigative journalist. She knew how to put pieces together – it was inevitable that she eventually would. But he couldn't bring himself to face that confrontation any sooner than he had to.

Alex turned back restlessly. He'd just gotten back to the apartment a mere fifteen minutes ago, and already he was bored. But he knew Dana would give him an earful on 'traipsing through Manhattan like fucking Superman' without spending any time at home. Home… the entire concept had a strange feel to it. He'd gotten this apartment as a primary place of residence for himself and his sister about a month ago, bought with the contents of several bank accounts that had never been closed post-mortem, but whatever _home_ was supposed to be just wasn't clicking for him. He liked the place, mostly because his sister could usually be found there, but he felt neither safe nor at ease within its walls. He was still more calm and secure gazing from the high periphery of any of Manhattan's numerous skyscrapers, where there were no constraints on his actions and he stood king over all he surveyed.

It had been two months since the crisis had taken place – the Outbreak was still in the city, but it was more controlled, the military managing to chip away at the remaining hives and centers. Of course, he was doing a lot of the heavy lifting in fighting the Infection, but those deeds were always done incognito or off the record. The disaster had reached its climax on the U.S.S. Reagan, where he and his unlikely ally Cross had battled the gargantuan Supreme Hunter while Blackwatch's last intended hell for New York had ticked away in the background. Everything had culminated in that one final fight, with Blackwatch attempting to glass all of New York City to deal with Redlight, and the most powerful of the virus's creations trying to tear everything to pieces. But while the Supreme Hunter had been the pinnacle of Redlight's beasts, Mercer was Blacklight – a manmade variant of Redlight, created to be myriad times deadlier, and it was his strength that prevailed. Without having time to disarm the nuclear bomb, Alex had taken a docked helicopter and flown it over the Atlantic – the water had muted its detonation, but his unfortunate proximity to the weapon had nearly killed him anyways. In the wake of the explosion, he'd been reduced to so much primordial slop. The amount he'd had to consume to return to only a part of his full strength afterwards had been unsettling, even for him. But that was all in the past now.

He'd returned to Ragland's morgue as soon as he was in any shape to, for a trepid check on his sister's health. For perhaps the first time in his life, Alex Mercer's unease had yielded joy. The moment was engraved deeply in his mind's eye; his sister had been sitting cross-legged in a chair, her eyes so startled at the creak of the door as she looked up from an outdated magazine… for that long minute where they simply embraced, holding each other tightly as Dana sobbed into his shoulder, Alex had felt _human_. According to the doctor, Dana had woken up from her coma nearly a day prior, a time that Mercer had cross-referenced to correlate with when he'd finally brought down Elizabeth Greene.

Two months later, Manhattan was beginning to recover, to heal from its scars and move on… but where did that leave him? Alex wasn't so sure. There was no question of a normal life for him, of that he was certain – but where was he supposed to belong in a world that reviled him? Dana accepted him as family, Ragland aided him in some semblance of poorly veiled fear, and Captain Cross worked with him out of necessity, but he wasn't going to fool himself into thinking there might be any sort of understanding. There was none to be found, and he doubted there ever would be. He was, when it came down to it, an entity beyond their comprehension.

On the other tentacle, he was pretty sure he didn't care.

He had Dana, and as dysfunctional as their little family was, he was as content as anyone with no inherent capacity for happiness could be. He really wasn't sure what to do or say, or how to act _normal_, but she took his awkwardness in stride, with the occasional joke at his expense. Many of his hours in the apartment were spent wordlessly, but there was something in that silence between them, the clicking of her fingers on the keyboard and the hum of the heater, something that didn't need words to be conveyed. They were together.

It wasn't that they didn't _talk_, but any conversation with Alex Mercer was bound to get either extremely freakish or extremely absurd if kept up long enough.

"Hey, Alex. Get a load of this."

With a sort of tired obedience, he disentangled himself from the sofa, the springs groaning in protest with his every movement. He stretched briefly as he rolled to his feet; a quick flicker of black shivered at his fingertips before he let his arms drop. He rolled his shoulders as he made his way over to Dana's chair. This quiet and unassuming life was… _nice_, in a way, but the less conscience-bound fathoms of his mind felt awfully cramped and restless. It was not a pleasant sensation. He felt torn between two drives – one to be with his sister, to catch up on a lifetime's worth of bonding, and alongside it, the fiercer need to keep her in his sight at all times, to protect her and ensure she never got hurt again. But there was another part of his mind that… hell, he wasn't really sure what it wanted, but from how twitchy and edgy he was when he tried to stay indoors for prolonged periods of time, it involved a lot more running and jumping than he was getting in as of late. He didn't really know how he was supposed to feel, being the self-aware personification of the virus – was simply sitting in this room stressful because Blacklight had other ulterior motives by design, or because he'd become accustomed to war, and every moment brought with it the possibility of Blackwatch troops storming in with guns ablaze, or any one of the fragile walls shattering inward with a Hunter's blow?

He leaned forward against his sister's swivel chair, hands splayed against the tip. Dana was blogging, or whatever it was called.

After a moment's worth of scanning the screen, he was about to ask her what was so unique about what was apparently a SoHo resident's rant about the government. But before he could open his mouth, the post turned towards 'some seriously fucked up shit' that the feds were failing to do anything about, complete with an embedded video that had a rather unmistakable person on the teaser.

At his gesture, his sister followed it back to Youtube, and with growing amusement, he observed shaky camera footage of himself practicing backflips off of the side of a movie theater.

"Okay, not that I think you actually paid to fix all the broken glass, but I have to admit, that's kind of awesome. No, it's straight up awesome. I have no idea how the hell you do it."

Alex shrugged, trying to read the comments below. There was no way to explain things that just came naturally. He'd been working on his maneuverability yesterday, trying to streamline his evasive techniques. He never really cared who saw him unless they started shooting him or tried to follow him home, so he wasn't surprised that somebody had caught him on video camera. Seemingly done with watching her brother flip around, Dana scrolled down so they could read the comments together.

_-Holy shit. This for real?_

_-Dude, they're going to take your vid down. It's some kind of cover up._

_-fake_

_-no I think its legit, this isnt the first thing ive seen of that guy_

_-probably just something from a movie, you gullible dumbasses_

_-A little girl lost her parents to the infected. She prayed for Mommy and Daddy to come back, but instead a hooded man came to her and slit her throat. Now she wants others to feel her pain. You've read this and now she's watching you. Post this message on ten other videos within the next three days or the man will come for you too._

_-gtfo_

_-Can't believe people actually post this shit…_

_-That's really not funny. You shouldn't make up chain letters like that. Whoever this guy is, he really is out there. My friend swears she saw him in Central Park – says he just showed up out of nowhere, except one of his arms was a sword. He chased this poor elderly man down and beat him to death. Then he_

He stopped reading as Dana sucked in a harsh breath. Some things, he really wished his sister wouldn't see. Even now, he could feel the omnipresent smolder in his chest, a dull burn that refused to be ignored. His mass inside was always shifting, yearning to break out into barbed tendrils and convert the soft and yielding flesh around him into viral biomass to assimilate. The need to consume had diminished somewhat now that he didn't weather dozens of machine gun rounds and javelin missiles on an hourly basis, but it was far from gone.

Dana turned to him, her expression pained. Alex cringed. Were he human, his cheeks would have been crimson with embarrassment. As it was, he was inclined to literally melt into the floor. But he was a man, and men were supposed to face their problems. At least, that's what a lot of his memories told him. Actually, technically speaking, he wasn't a man. Did that give him license to turn tail and run away? Or maybe he could try the melting?

"Yeah, Dana, I _know_. Look, we've already talked about this…"

"Can't you, like… you know… _not_ eat people? You know I love you, Alex, but I'm not gonna lie, it's pretty damn creepy just thinking about it."

Alex tossed his hands in the air in exasperation. "What do you want me to do about it? I can't eat like you do. It'd be a lot easier if I could. I need living matter to consume."

"Isn't there anything else? Like… I don't know, cute fluffy animals or something?"

Alex sighed. "This is Manhattan, not the suburbs. There's no wildlife around here besides rats and birds. I need more biomass than that. It's not like I can just go to the zoo and hope that nobody notices their exhibits systematically emptying themselves on a daily basis. Or if I went to a pet store and bought a dog every day. It's… look, I know it sounds really sick, and it is, but people go missing in New York a lot more conveniently than decent-sized fauna." He rubbed his chin, feeling suddenly tired. "I'm doing all I can. I'm trying to stick to the straggler Infected… I can't help what I am."

Shame wasn't something he normally struggled with, but Dana tended to evoke it within him on a troublingly regular basis. It was like she knew _exactly_ what to say and what look to give him when she wanted him to see things her way. And that wasn't good, because no matter how much he tried to follow her perspective, he _wasn't_ her - wasn't human. And a lot of his issues probably would be a lot simpler through the human outlook; things that never had to be dealt with, ever. But they did, and that was just a fraction of what it meant to be Alex Mercer.

"I love how you can casually just talk about getting away with homicide," his sister muttered under her breath.

"…What?" He ceased his studious examination of the carpeting to look up, perplexed by the incongruous statement. He was pretty sure that was one of the inevitable kinks in their relationship, and not a plus.

She exhaled, looking exasperated but also faintly amused – that was good, right? "That was sarcasm."

"Oh."

She leaned back against her chair, looking thoughtful as she chewed absently on her lip. Alex frowned. That pensive face usually preceded some well-meaning but generally poorly thought-out attempt to 'help' him. He thought he'd managed to get across to her that he just needed time to ease himself into the role of being 'human', and if she _really_ wanted to get him a stress ball, it had to be made out of at least steel for him to get anything out of it… but apparently she still hadn't gotten the message. "What is it?" he asked guardedly as she stood up, snatching her purse up from its nest of papers. She was definitely up to something.

"I'm going to the supermarket. There's got to be something there that isn't processed and in a can."

He snorted. "Good luck with that."

Dana crossed the single room like a determined storm cloud, sending dust and loose articles scattering in her wake. Almost out of the room, she paused in the doorway. "Stay here," she demanded, imperiously pointing a finger at him. "You'd better be here when I get back."

"Of course, sis," he agreed blandly, settling back onto the couch.

As soon as the elevator in the hallway gave its arriving 'ping', he was running up the side of the apartment's wall, leaping around the scaffolding and savoring the harsh tang of Manhattan air.

Thank god for windows.

0o0o0

He wasn't disobedient for the _sake_ of being disobedient, he thought somewhat guiltily as he slid back into the window a perfect seventy-five minutes later. Dana just didn't understand that her viral monstrosity of a brother didn't deal well with enclosed spaces. He needed his fresh air. Besides, he'd worked out all of the calculations in his head and made sure to return to the apartment before she did – five minutes before the third standard deviation below her average shopping time at the grocer's, just to be safe – so it wasn't like he was standing her up or anything. What she didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

Alex scowled at the last thought. From his experience, that was a very poor choice of words… but whatever. He wasn't a philosopher.

Okay, so he was definitely _too_ early, he decided fifteen minutes later, perusing a newspaper without really reading it, but he'd rather face Greene, the Supreme Hunter, and a well-armed Blackwatch battalion all at once than his sister's wrath. Or even worse, the disappointed face. He couldn't _stand_ the disappointed face. Better to wait it out.

So while soldiers tore up the streets and Blackwatch helicopters scanned the remaining Red Zones for traces of the elusive viral monster, it occurred to none of them that Zeus was holed up in an apartment in East Harlem, sprawled on a sofa and clockwatching.

He had Captain Cross to thank for that, actually – while he and the experienced veteran were by no means amicable with each other, they were on relatively good terms. Mercer would never admit it, but he had a grudging admiration for Cross. He'd been the only human to ever walk away from a fight with him, and he was also the only Blackwatch member that Alex had a modicum of respect for. Cross had been the only one of them to think beyond what they'd been told; he'd realized past his preconceived notions that Zeus was fighting against the Infection, not for it, and had unwound his pride enough to work with Mercer in secret, refusing to allow his commanding officer to nuke Manhattan. They were hardly comfortable around each other, and both harbored a small but wary expectation that the other would turn on them, but their unlikely partnership had never ended. The captain wasn't a fool enough to think he could actually convince anyone in his organization that the Blacklight virus was relatively safe – as long as he had superiors, he'd be shot immediately for enunciating such sentiments – but he hadn't forgotten Mercer's help in stopping the virus. Having a relatively high position, Cross was able to manipulate Blackwatch from within. He couldn't do anything drastic for fear of compromising his position, but he nudged searches away from the Mercer residence and planted false leads whenever necessary. Alex was surprised by this continued loyalty, but refused to give the captain his complete faith. Blind trust had not served him well in the past. Still, he returned those favors in his own way, aiding Cross and lending his firepower against the Infected whenever he ran into Cross in the field. Actually, that sounded pretty fun right about now… but getting eviscerated by his sister did not. Home life was downright brutal sometimes…

Dana finally returned after an hour, bearing a triumphant expression and a bulging grocery bag that may or may not have been squirming.

"I'm back," she announced, somewhat redundantly, as she unceremoniously dropped the bag on the kitchen table. Tired of lounging on the couch and both curious and trepid as to what his sister had found on her mission, Alex get up and followed her into the other room.

"Find anything?" he asked, hoping the answer was a no.

"Yep," she said triumphantly. "I was totally right. As usual."

He watched as she unloaded a few boxes of cereal, some canned soup, a bag of truffles, some generic ingredients, a handful of frozen dinners, boxes of pasta, and two… things.

She plucked them up, putting one on the countertop near the stove and the other on the table in front of him; the odd thing wriggled in protest. It was dull and dark in color, and had a segmented, shelled body. It had more legs than he thought was necessary, and two large pincer-claws that were held shut by generous application of rubber bands. Eyes on stalks swiveled to stare at the confused Blacklight entity.

Alex eyed the grayish crustacean dubiously.

"And this is…?"

"Lobster. What, you've never heard of it? Freaking delicacy. They sell 'em live, so they'll be fresh when you steam them. I figure you'd skip the cooking. Probably not too great like that, but hey, I'm trying not to judge here."

The viral monstrosity was not so sure about his new meal. It did not look nearly as soft and meaty as his feeder tendrils were used to.

"They cost a fucking fortune too, so you'd better be grateful."

He didn't care enough to mention that it was his money that supported the two, and was too absorbed in sizing up this new 'lobster' to be paying much attention anyways. He tilted his head. It waved a claw at him. It looked distinctly unhappy – imperceptibly, Alex tensed, getting ready in case the beast made a lunge for his sister, who was still hovering over his shoulder. It didn't look very dangerous, and Dana didn't appear to be afraid, but humans did seem to die ridiculously easy, and he wasn't taking any chances.

"Well?"

Alex paused, hesitating. He was ambivalent as to whether or not he _wanted_ to eat the lobster. It wasn't inciting the usual urge to consume he got around living beings; that weird, hard-to-define instinct was reacting indifferently at best. He wasn't even sure he'd be able to convert it into biomass – Blacklight had been made to infect humans, and he'd had some difficulty trying to assimilate crows and vermin. But if he refused this thing, then Dana would be sad. And he was not going to make Dana sad. If he _did_ take it, then Dana would see him consume, which would probably freak her out. Deforming into a mass of red and black tentacles tended to have that effect on people… Inwardly, he sighed. He missed the days when all of his dilemmas could be solved by just killing somebody or something.

"Earth to Alex?"

"Oh." He glanced back over his shoulder; his sister had an expectant look, mingled with a dash of hopefulness that made him feel like something in his chest was getting strangled. Dana really shouldn't have to feel like she needed to take care of him… but the sentiment evoked a rare rush of affection. He didn't deserve to have her… saying 'no' at this point would be like smacking a kitten with a grenade launcher. That was on fire. Off the empire state building. Dammit, he didn't have a choice, did he?

"Thanks, Dana." He hoped he sounded convincing.

The smile he got in return was downright adorable. Dana might have been the snarkiest and most fiery person on the planet, but to Alex, she was his little sister, and carried most of the emotional strings included in that package.

"So…?"

"Ah, you might not want to watch this." His eyes flicked back to the crustacean on the table, wondering where the hell he was supposed to start with it. He could pierce Blackwatch raiment and tank chasses, and a shell really couldn't be much trouble after that, but… where was the edible part? "It's sort of disturbing…"

"It's that tentacle thing, right?"

An eyebrow was sharply lifted. "…Dana, where did you see that?"

She shrugged. "Youtube. Gateway to the world, I swear."

"I…" He shuddered. Damn it, maybe being as blatantly open to the world as he tended to be was not such a good idea. Hell, what else had she seen? He wasn't ashamed of what he was, but he hardly wanted his little sister seeing him in all his glory. Sighing, he returned his attention to the lobster, prodding the junction between two of the plates to see if there was any space between them. "I really wish you hadn't looked for that."

"Honestly? The video wasn't half as scary as the comments."

"…I do _not_ want to know." One of the things he'd learned very quickly about humanity was that the race had a positively terrifying imagination. The twisted directions their hormone-addled minds launched off in were enough to make him cringe at times.

Dana seemed inclined to talk anyways. "I have no idea what makes shmucks look at homicide and think hentai, but-"

"Okay, _enough_." With more vigor than was strictly necessary, he let his consumption appendages emerge and plunged them into the unlucky crustacean. The tendrils growing from Alex's chest mercifully served as conversation stoppers, and Dana dropped the subject as her brother's skin erupted into a dissonant blur of red and black. The tentacles wrapped around and into the lobster, melting what was once a fully functioning organism into a Blacklight-style primordial soup. Once he'd converted as much of it to viral mass as was possible, he pulled his tendrils back, drawing the indiscernible stuff with it. He frowned. As far as consuming went, that had been terribly underwhelming. The term 'fun-sized' occurred to him from somewhere in his jumbled mess of memories. He wondered what was supposed to be fun about it.

A few moments passed as Alex recalibrated his appearance and wondered if he'd even gained anything from the whole attempt.

"Huh," Dana finally said. "Well, that's something you don't see too often."

He looked at her askance, his expression almost apologetic. She seemed a little pale, but thankfully was not shrieking, pointing at him, fainting, or throwing up, which was what he usually got from passerby when he started consuming things in the middle of the street.

There was a persevering awkward silence, which was usually the dominant species of silence in the Mercer household.

"So, that's settled then?" Dana cut in.

"What is?"

"Food arrangements. Like, you can stop running around eating people now, because there are other alternatives. Work with me here, Alex. You're not exactly the easiest person to cater to."

What? No. No, that was a dangerous assumption, and he needed to nip it in the bud before she took it upon herself to micromanage his diet. "Uh, no, it's not. Look, I appreciate everything you do for me, sis, but… it wasn't very big."

"…damn it!" Apparently, she genuinely hadn't noticed.

He shrugged apologetically, then winced. It felt like a fragment of shell was floating around where his collarbone appeared to be. He'd have to get rid of that later.

"Well, I'm gonna go cook mine. Do you have any idea where the steamer is?" He shook his head, and she crossed over to the cabinets underneath the countertop, rummaging through the pans and kitchenware. Eventually, she must have found it, for the jarring sounds of his sister's aggressive cooking resonated through the room. The thought of dinner made him uncomfortable – the lobster had done very little for his biomass, and now his feeder tendrils were awake, so to speak, and wanted something for their effort. A few deep breaths didn't settle that desire – the hell, he'd actually been doing well today, for once. Well, that was gone now.

Alex left the kitchen, milling around the living room in a would-be-aimless fashion that had a specific objective in mind. He gradually edged towards the door, looking as nondescript as possible. His hand was on the knob now – he could just turn it and slip quietly out of scrutiny. It would be so easy. Fingers curled around the handle, then hesitated. Dana hated it when he left unannounced. Damn it, why was he going so soft?

"Look, I, ah…" he mumbled, fidgeting. "…gonna go out, get something to eat."

She bit her lip and looked up at him; Alex paused, halfway out the door. Her plea didn't need words – he knew what she was afraid of.

He gave a half-smile, trying to reassure her. "Infected. I promise."

The Outbreak was not a good thing, they both agreed on that. But neither of them wanted to think about what would happen after the last remnants of the Redlight virus faded away.


	2. A Proposition

"Roger that, Red Crown. Team Wiseman, onsite. I repeat, Team Wiseman has arrived on the site. Orders?"

"Relay situation at site Sally A-19, over."

"Confirmed red zone, Red Crown. We have a hive at Sally A-21. Mixed bag of Infected here, everything except Copperheads. We are stationary and awaiting orders."

"Stay put and hold the position, Wisemen. We'll have the cavalry at your location in T minus twenty. Red Crown out."

With a sigh, Captain Robert Cross clicked the communicator shut and stowed it in his belt. His men stood around him in a semicircle, awaiting their duties. He was proud of them, every last one of them. They had all been hand-picked at his discretion; they were the strongest, the bravest, the quickest on their feet, and the most cunning Blackwatch had to offer. He was determined to be worthy of their unwavering loyalty, just as they were determined to be worthy of his steadfast leadership. They were unstoppable. The group had only one strike marring their perfect record, and even then, they'd fared better against Alex Mercer than any other Blackwatch unit had to date.

"All right, men," he barked. "We're holding our ground until the tanks roll in. Then it's a full frontal assault on the hive. Nothing gets past us! Nothing remains standing! Am I clear?"

"Yes, sir!" was the unanimous chant.

The helicopter they'd disembarked on returned to the skies and drifted off into the distance. The Wisemen never needed an evacuation at the ready. They were the best of the best.

They were located on the rooftop of a medium-sized abandoned apartment complex. The masses of Infected tended to stick to the ground, only climbing up buildings when they were aware of prey. The street around their current location was mostly empty, save for a few Walkers – the team's snipers quickly remedied that – but the street beyond, only partially obstructed by a shorter building, was crawling with Redlight beasts. Beyond _that_, an office building pulsed with the telltale growths and tendrils of a hive.

Captain Cross was not happy. Like just about everyone else in Blackwatch, he had a problem. Unlike just about everyone else in Blackwatch, Cross's problem was not Zeus. He had other problems. He knew that Zeus was dangerous, but so were they – and Zeus's danger wasn't the sort of danger they were contracted to deal with. Zeus was not just another biological weapon hell-bent on spreading itself; he was a single entity that showed no signs of wanting to increase his population count, he was a sentient being, and he could be reasoned with. He had no qualms about randomly murdering, but neither did they, and while he had an apparent vendetta against Blackwatch, careful nitpicking of the records had shown the captain that Blackwatch had actually _started_ the hostilities between Zeus and themselves, and not the other way around, as it was so often spun. Had Randall been willing to drop his sledgehammer negotiations at the outset, Zeus might have been neatly recruited as one of their assets, and Elizabeth Greene's containment would have never been breached. It was all quite a shame… but it was also all done with, and while Blackwatch still chased after Zeus like he was the cause of every problem on Earth, Cross silently disapproved of that sentiment. Zeus wanted to be left alone, and more importantly, had an ever-growing capacity for destruction that Blackwatch could not currently match. As long as nothing changed, leaving what had become of Alex Mercer to his own devices was much more prudent than hunting him down.

No, his problem was a certain General Samson.

Cross knew he should have been the next leader of Blackwatch. He was the natural choice when Randall finally kicked the bucket - he had more field experience than anyone else alive in Blackwatch, and one of the best track records to boot. He did not _crave_ power - he simply wanted to prevent others from taking it. The recent circumstances with the nuclear bomb had further shaken his trust in the organization's leadership, and he was no longer confident in allowing anyone else to hold the reins. So when some upstart pulled a few strings, passed some bribes, and brought 'unusual circumstances and security failures' regarding Cross and the Reagan, where a certain Alex Mercer was rumored to have been involved, Cross was unsurprisingly displeased.

He intended to do something about it.

He had men loyal to him. His Wisemen would stand by him, no matter how insane the order was. And what he was planning had definitely thrown some of them for a loop. But it was a testament to how much stock they put in him when the only questions they'd posed were about the reliability of his lynchpin, once he'd told them what he was going to do. The act itself, they approved of.

It wasn't so much what he was planning as how he was planning to do it.

There were still some things to finalize. Such as the most important person in the plan not yet knowing they had a role in it.

He lifted his specialized visor; Captain Cross preferred forgoing a helmet on missions, but he still had the ocular tools for the field when he needed them. Turning up the magnification, he turned in a slow circle, scanning the surrounding rooftops for possible threats. There wasn't any motion, but a few mounted water tanks were leaking telltale orange ooze on the top of one building. He removed his eyepiece.

"Incubators to the east. Detwiller, take them."

"I'm on it, sir." The indicated soldier, who favored a grenade launcher, followed Cross's gesture and took aim. Three shots were fired off, and three water towers burst in rapid sequence. The captain nodded in approval.

A minute passed in alert silence.

"Since when does Red Crown send us in and then make us play Eye Spy for half an hour?" one private muttered derisively to another. "Never had to fuckin' wait before."

"Because General Samson thinks we're just another kill team to be tossed around," spat another. "Damn greenhorn has no clue who we are."

"We're the fucking Wisemen! We've been killing bastards since Samson was in the fucking cradle!"

"Enough." Cross cut them off, quiet but firm. "We won't have this problem much longer. For now, just bear it. It's not going to kill you."

"Sir, we have movement from the southwest, coming in fast!"

Cross jerked around to face the direction, pulling up his visor to zoom in. A few tense moments were spent fumbling with the dials. Indeed, something was there –a dark blur that dashed off at erratic angles, following no coherent pattern of movement and refusing to be pinned down.

He yanked his visor down as a jarring _thud_ shook the building underfoot. Literally shook – the rooftop buckled slightly under the impact, and a few crashes echoed below, inside the already-damaged rooms. The captain sighed abruptly, the sound lost amongst the reactions of his men, and dragged a hand through his hair. There were only two creatures he knew of that could tremble a building like that, and Hunters did not wear leather jackets.

"It's Zeus! Freeze!"

This chant came alongside the sound of several rifles being cocked, and in one case, hastily reloaded. The battle cry was perhaps not as enthusiastic as it once had been. The Wiseman team was not _used_ to Alex Mercer-style random encounters on their missions - it was not the sort of thing anyone ever became used to - but this was not the first time it had happened. Still, each squadron member privately wondered what the hell the Captain was thinking each time he ordered them to stand down, and itched to shoot the germy bastard on sight.

Predictably, Cross lifted a hand. "Stand down."

Zeus was already traversing the rooftop before the guns were lowered, everything in his posture speaking nonchalance and a smug lack of concern. For Mercer, who generally stalked like some sort of great cat, the gait might have been as close as he came to a swagger.

The not-quite-human stopped a few meters away from the head of the team and dipped his head in greeting. "Cross."

"Mercer." The captain's reply was equally concise. "What do you want?"

"I happened to pick you up and decided to say hello." Cross wasn't sure how Mercer could detect them, but he assumed it was either through the hivemind or through scent. He wasn't sure what to feel about the unannounced arrival – the man-turned-virus was uniquely useful to him on occasion, but when he wasn't necessary, Alex Mercer was not Cross's preferred company. But there _had_ been something he'd wanted to discuss. "Planning on doing something about that hive over there?"

"What's it to you?"

"I had similar plans." The edges of the hooded man's lips tugged up ever so slightly. "Think some cooperation is in order?"

"No. We have the situation covered on our own." Cross decided to spare his men the trouble. Mercer was not an easy person to work with, and he doubted that Blacklight cared if any of the Wisemen besides himself lived or died.

The smirk grew. "Works for me. You'd only get in my way. I've got this."

The captain sighed irritably. "No need. We've got tanks coming in fifteen minutes."

Mercer's face finally broke into a clear grin, a grin so ferally amused that even Cross raised an eyebrow. "I can do it faster."

And with that, he flipped off the side of the building. A moment later, he was sailing through the air, alighting on the rooftop of the shorter structure on the other side of the street, his left arm wavering as dark tentacles snaked around it. Another mighty leap and he was out of sight again, barreling towards the hive with reckless abandon.

A note of sharp laughter reached the team, somehow audible over the snarls and groans of the Infected.

"That is one crazy motherfucker," Detwiller muttered.

Cross privately agreed.

0o0o0

Alex snickered as he sprang from building to building, readying his blade for action. It was just too much fun. Pissing off Cross in a way the captain couldn't complain about, scaring his team shitless, and breaking things? This was the life. Yeah, Cross had some explaining to do when the armor showed up, but this way, none of his men were risking their lives going up against the Infected. And Cross knew that.

He casually bisected a water tower as he passed, sensing rather than seeing the Hunter growing inside of it. His blade was fully formed now, its serrated edges sharp and deadly. Admittedly, some of the spiky protrusions on it were more decorative than functional, but as long as he was confident about what he was going up against, he could afford to sacrifice some utility for aesthetics.

A final bound and he was sailing off the last rooftop. Mercer had a policy about entering a fight – unless stealth was absolutely vital, there was absolutely no reason not to make a lasting first impression. He felt out his balance in midair, trying to find the best angle of attack; after a split second's worth of planning, he tensed himself and clasped his mutated arm with his free hand, pouring all of his force into his raised blade and twisting his body so the edge slammed into the ground like a guillotine. Or what a guillotine wanted to be when it grew up.

The impact sliced clean through an Infected in the way, and left a deep gash in the asphalt. But the damage didn't end there – the sheer force of the blow sent a shockwave of debris tearing through anything unfortunate enough to be close by. The long crash resounded through the street, the thunderous noise laced with a thinly metallic rasp.

Alex remained kneeling for a few moments, rolling his shoulders to ease the strain. Some of his attacks tended to be self-destructive; he had so much power at his disposal that channeling it all through a single area was somewhat painful even to him, completely barring his more reckless techniques that he'd aptly dubbed 'devastators'. Normally, he didn't bother using much of his strength, but the whole shockwave effect simply looked too cool to pass up. Slowly, he got to his feet, keeping low for a brief moment – he straightened up fully once he was sure nothing alive was close enough to take swipes at him.

He paused momentarily to size things up. The hive was pretty large, but that also meant it would come down easier; gravity was just waiting to take over his job. The area was full of meandering Infected, but their numbers were thin compared to what hives had been protected with a few months back. There were a few Hunters present, and some of the more heavily warped Walkers, but if there were any Leaders around, they were keeping a remarkably low profile. He hadn't seen one in a while, actually. As the Infection progressively died down, the more evolved Redlight creatures had grown scarcer. _Might as well take a few while I can._ Alex liked Hunters. They were enormous, easy enough to kill, and their memories were too incoherent to torment him. Although that last part was unanimous for all of the Infected; Redlight's use as a guilt-free food source was the only thing he didn't despise about it.

The pack of Hunters noticed him first – a staggered series of roars echoed through the valley-like street as they made their charge. Alex didn't bother to move out of the way; he merely shifted slightly, bending his knees and repositioning his weaponized arm.

"All right, you useless animals," he muttered, a razor-sharp smile splitting his shadowed face. "Let's see what you can do."

The first Hunter ran directly into Alex's blade, which had been slashed vertically moments before impact. The unfortunate beast did not quite rend itself in half, but the resulting wound was close enough to have the same effect. Its momentum carried it several meters along its suicidal charge further before it collapsed, effectively dead, crushing a gaggle of Walkers in its path.

Now Alex moved, a quick sidestep preceding a leap into the air. He grabbed the second Hunter as it passed him, carrying it along for the ride. Was anyone watching, it might have been an odd sight – it was at least twice his size – but he had no difficulty restraining its struggles, and he hardly noticed the few swipes it made at him. At the peak of his jump, he flipped over, airdashing downwards to increase his velocity. He slammed it into the pavement, feeling the asphalt split and several Hunter bones shatter under the impact. Without wasting any time, he ran his blade through the stunned creature several times, then plunged his feeder tendrils in to finish it off. The injured Hunter grated out a final, defiant cry before the Blacklight virus broke it down and used it to replicate. Alex was on his feet before his tentacles had finished pulling it in – there was no time to savor the sudden rush of well-being, the intoxicating satisfaction of the act. Not when his logical mind told him he was working under a time limit and his instincts screamed for more.

Unbidden, a snarl began to form in his throat. He whirled around; hyper alert and half-unhinged with adrenaline, he could feel lurching footsteps through the ground and stirred currents in the otherwise still air. With his untransformed hand, he grabbed the Evolved Infected that had been trying to strike him from behind, its deformed sword-hand raised, and hoisted it up by its throat. It had about a second to writhe in his grasp, its disfigured face gaping, before he snapped its neck with a casual flick of his fingers, and let his tentacles emerge again to assimilate it.

He spared his surroundings a quick look askance. His leap had taken him to a different area of the street, a spot that was closer to the hive. He couldn't see the two remaining Hunters, but a large crowd of basic Infected was jerkily converging on him. He glanced down at his blade-styled arm; while it was still deadly, it wasn't optimized for this sort of combat.

He drew his shoulders back, relocating his mass within and _willing_ his body to shift. Tendrils snaked around his arm and his deforming blade, hardening into a wave of spiny chitin and flowing down the two limbs. One set of fingers lengthened into impossibly massive talons that resembled elongated razor blades than anything else, while on the other arm, muscle grew and joints snapped into existence, and the same deadly claws sprouted from the bottom edge of the melting scimitar.

Alex wasted no time. He hurled himself into the fray in a frenzied flurry of claws, tearing, slashing, whirling, letting his own momentum carry him through the mass of Infected. He fought blindly, neither needing nor caring enough to pay attention; wherever his arms swung, his talons encountered the thick but insignificant resistance of skin and muscle. Within the span of fifteen seconds, only a quarter of the Walkers were still intact. He waded through the carnage with an instinctive ease he could never possess in the aspects of a normal life.

A heavy crash served to remind him that the Hunters had not ceased to exist after he had jumped away from them; one of them was homing in on him now. It swept aside a car with a careless blow, sending a tinkling spray of glass across the street. There was no time to form a more suitable weapon, so he sprang forward and up, launching himself onto the giant Infected's back and clinging to it like a parasite. It stopped its headlong charge and reared up, shaking its head wildly as it tried to jostle its unwanted rider and shrieking as Mercer dug one set of claws in to hold on. He kept his balance, slashing at its exposed neck and shoulders until the struggle ceased, and prepared to consume it while a spark of life still remained.

A roar made him whip around, but he was a moment too slow to evade the fourth and final Hunter as it careened into him from behind, bowling him over and pinning him to the ground. He hissed furiously as its claws bit into his chest, raking madly in a rarely successful bid to land a hit. Alex's torso writhed, repairing itself even as it was repeatedly slashed open, but also hardening; the soft layered shirts and jacket split into segmented plates of a grey-black metallic material. With an earsplitting screech, the Hunter's claws lost their purchase and skidded uselessly against his armor and off to the side. He wasted no time in lunging forth and using his own claws to eviscerate the beast; for good measure, he ran it through lengthwise and tossed the corpse aside.

With all of the possible threats dealt with, Mercer let his half-formed armor dissipate and turned his attention to the hive. The military hadn't arrived yet, meaning they hadn't brought their toys. It was regrettable that he couldn't create his own fireworks tonight, but he didn't need ammunition to bring down a mere building.

He slammed his palms into the ground to pulverize any approaching Walkers, then settled into a half-kneeling position. One arm returned to his side while the other dug its claws into the street, funneling lengths of biomass underground.

About two seconds passed uneventfully, and then there was much destruction.

Bricks shattered, metal screamed, and framework groaned as Alex plunged spike after spike into the hive, tearing gaping holes in the structure's base with gargantuan tentacles. They burst from the ruined windows and bulbous growths, sinking back in only to carve out another opening somewhere else. His handiwork did not simply begin at his hands, vanish, and reappear at his target – the asphalt was buckling and warping where he manipulated his groundspikes under the street, and he felt a subway tunnel collapse through his network of sensors.

When he finally pulled back, the building was truncated beyond recognition, tilted to the side and as punctured as an old pincushion. All that was left to do was to give gravity a nudge.

He gathered up his strength and sprang into the air, landing on the side of a derelict hotel to make another, higher leap. After gaining height between several structures, he took one last jump, spreading out his arms and altering his composition to glide. He could only manage to float on the air for a few seconds without any boosts before he lost control and fell, but that was all he needed. As he soared above the hive, he abruptly pulled his biomass back to its normal spread, regaining his density. He angled himself downwards as he began to plummet, folding his outstretched claw-arms against his sides to minimize air resistance. The wind whistled in his ears as he rocketed down towards the battered hive.

The impact was jarring, but ever so satisfying, even as he slammed headfirst into reinforced concrete from a terrific height. During the moment where he repaired his skull, he felt the force of his collision spread through the structure in waves, appreciating the flow of the destructive energy and the thunderclap of pure sound even at the colossal damage it cost him. With a final howl of splitting metal, the hive gave way; he righted himself just in time to jump from the collapsing roof and jet across the street below, crossing the buildings to return to Cross's position as flames erupted in furious splendor behind him.

"Problem solved," he announced with a smirk as he leapt onto Cross's rooftop, dislodging a few rusted pipes on the building's side. Several of the Wisemen jerked at the scraping rattle of falling debris, and a few leveled their guns at him. He paid them no heed. They were well-trained enough not to fire as long as he didn't start goring them, and it was hardly like he was afraid of their weapons anyways. As long as the captain could keep his Blackwatch dogs in line, he'd let them live.

The captain himself showed no signs of having been startled – he merely pulled his impassive gaze away from the burning wreck a few streets down and to the viral monster. "And more created. You do realize how hard this is going to be to explain once the APCs show up?" he muttered, shaking his head.

"Of course I do. I just see that as an added bonus."

"You know, Mercer, I really don't have any obligation to keep you off the map."

"Are you that pissed off about it? You're Blackwatch. Isn't making up stories to cover up the truth one of the job requirements? Just say a gas main exploded or something."

"That's a ridiculous excuse."

"Yeah, well, deal with it. As much as I like making things difficult, Cross, having me here while your backup comes involves a few more rounds to the face than I prefer taking." He flicked his wrist in a careless wave as he looked away, lifting his gaze to scan the buildings above. "Try not to die while I'm gone."

"Wait up. Mercer, there's a problem I'd like to discuss." The captain stepped forward, a note of seriousness entering his otherwise annoyed appearance.

The hood slanted to the side as Zeus turned his head back, revealing a few dark curls. "What do you want me to blow up for you this time?"

If he wasn't trying his damnedest to negotiate, Cross would have rolled his eyes. Damn brute. "It's not that simple."

"Then I probably don't care about it."

"You do. It's about Blackwatch's new general. Samson."

"Like I said." He completed the turn, facing Cross completely. He looked downright bored, slouching to the side a little - any soldier in his place would have been shot for insubordination. Cross wondered how Mercer was such an expert in infiltration when he was so tactless. "Not interested. One general or another, it's all the same. If he wants to send some strike teams after me, I'll just have to educate him on why that's not smart."

"Look, Mercer. Samson's never going to stop hunting you. You're a trophy to him. Randall had Hope under his belt. Samson doesn't have a feather in his cap yet, and he needs one to legitimize his authority. He doesn't care if you're captured or destroyed, so long as he can take the credit for being the one to finally neutralize the great Zeus. Hiding isn't going to be an option forever. He needs proof, and he's going to keep hunting you until he gets you."

Alex folded his arms, and a defiant noise rumbled in his throat. "Let them come."

_And now_, Cross thought, _time for the trump card._ Because there was one thing that could always be used to set the otherwise renegade virus in any direction at all. "Well, obviously you haven't got much to be afraid of. Just weather the gunfire and destroy any weapon that might pose a threat to you, right? The same sort of attack never works twice with you. But sadly, you can't say the same about your sister."

Mercer stiffened. "Leave Dana out of this," he growled, his eyes distrustfully raking the soldiers assembled behind the captain. He noticed that while they looked apprehensive, there was also a sort of wary expectation in their eyes, as if they knew how something was supposed to happen and were carefully watching to see if the outcome turned out correctly. What was Cross playing at?

"I wasn't planning on doing anything with her. But what do you think is going to happen? We've all seen the footage of you and that one Hunter – it's not exactly obscure that you were trying to save her. If you can't hurt somebody, hurt those around them. She's prime bait, completely vulnerable on her lonesome, and you can't protect her forever. You can't watch her every moment of your life. Right now, I don't see her hanging on your shoulder. Something happens to her right now, you wouldn't even know it." Mercer started to growl. Cross refused to be intimidated; he knew he was hammering his point home. "You can't ward off every attempt. Sooner or later, you're going to slip, and they'll have her."

"You say _they_ like you're not a part of them," Zeus hissed. The viral monster was pissed off, almost trembling with fury, but he was enraged because he'd been backed into a corner. It was time to open up the door.

"If you'd just hear me out, you'd see why I say that."

"Why the hell are you telling me all of this?"

Cross smiled, looking sharklike. "Because I have a proposition."

0o0o0

"Hmm," was all Alex said, frowning, once the captain had laid out everything as thoroughly as he could within a few minutes.

"I'm a busy man, Mercer. Will you or won't you? If you just stall here, the tanks are going to arrive, and I _will_ start shooting at you when I'm being watched."

"See, that's just the problem. Normally, this is the sort of thing that I'd do on my own anyway, whether you wanted it or not. But it makes me wonder. I always thought you were the paragon, Cross. High-and-mighty, incorruptible – at least, as much of that as you can get in Blackwatch." He spat out the last word like a curse.

"And your point?"

"If you're so willing to backstab the people you officially work for, I've gotta stop and wonder what that means for me." Icy eyes flashed. "I haven't forgotten when you contracted me to save your shock troops in disguise, then sent me into a trap full of Bloodtox and supersoldiers for all my trouble. How do I know you're not just gonna turn around and open fire as soon as I've outlived my usefulness?"

"…Perceptive." Cross was quietly surprised. From what he'd observed, Mercer displayed no caution to speak of, rushing into anywhere he was pointed at without a thought. It was true that he naturally had no reason to trust a Blackwatch captain, but if this wasn't an isolated incident... a conscientious Zeus was a more useful asset, but also a far more dangerous enemy.

He chose to answer the question with a question. "Can you really trust anyone? Can I trust you? Not really, Mercer, and I don't. But if that's not enough, I'll give you this incentive. It'll take time, but when I'm at its head, I'll get Blackwatch to stop hunting you, if you stop hunting Blackwatch. If you continue to give me your cooperation, I'll keep giving you mine."

There was an uncomfortable shifting among the Wisemen, but if they had something they wanted to say, they held their tongues. Alex's brow furrowed. "And you'd make that deal _why_?"

"Because I want to get Blackwatch to do its job, what it was originally formed to do. You're not spreading the virus. The way I see it, going after you solves nothing, and you just rip apart everything we send at you. It's a pointless war that's keeping us from doing our work."

"And in return, I'm supposed to forget what you've done? Blackwatch caused Hope, Cross. You unearthed Redlight, you funded Gentek, you created me. Do you want me to just stand aside and let you make your messes? Do you think I'll drop all of that for anything?"

"You will, if you don't want your sister to get killed in the crossfire."

Mercer recoiled as if struck; a long, hissing breath whistled through grated teeth, and flickers of black ran up and down his arms. "You fucking _bastard_."

"I'm the one giving you your chance. If you don't drop your goddamn vendetta, there is no way in hell for that girl to survive. Blackwatch has eyes everywhere. We don't stop. We don't give up. And unless I'm the one in charge, you're going to be the target."

The Blacklight virus gave no response, his fingers clenching into fists. Slowly, his arms stopped shifting; when he finally straightened up, his eyes were cold and hard.

"Well?"

"I'll think about it," he allowed, scowling deeply.

The captain nodded, mostly to himself; that meant he was going to get a yes. If Zeus was going to turn something down, he would do so at the outset. The virus simply didn't have any other options. "In that case, I want your answer tomorrow. The tanks are almost here. You'd better leave."

"As if I'm afraid of them. You're lucky I'm not tearing them all apart." Even so, Alex turned and made a running leap, springing to the side of a high-rise and sprinting up the side of it. He swung himself over the roof and vanished from sight.

Cross growled. "Asshole."

"Sir…" Another one of the Wisemen, a private with the surname of Black, cut in hesitantly. "Why the hell do you even talk with that thing?"

"Trust me," the captain grunted. "It's much easier to ignore him than it is to go up against him. And besides…" He jerked his head towards the ruined hive. "He gets things done."

"What the fuck was he talking about with Hope and the virus?" came another.

A touchier subject. "A lack of any other information. What Zeus doesn't understand, he blames on us."

Sometimes, Cross wondered just how much Alex Mercer did know. He'd literally chewed through Blackwatch's chain of command, getting every dirty secret firsthand. There was no doubt that he was playing with fire, trying to coerce Zeus to coexist with Blackwatch when he knew of every horrible deed they'd done, but it was the only way to save Blackwatch. And so was keeping those secrets buried where they lay. The captain made it a point never – _almost never_ – to lie to his men, but some things were just better off hidden.

A low mutter was rising amongst the contingent of soldiers – quiet, but nonetheless extremely atypical of the well-disciplined squad.

He sighed, recognizing their unhappiness when he saw it. "What is it, Wisemen?"

There was some uncomfortable shifting as the assembled soldiers wordlessly debated who would be the one to voice what they were all thinking to their leader.

"Captain, I…" It was Detwiller who finally mustered up the courage. "Look. I've been under you for years. You know I respect your judgment. But I really don't think you can trust that thing. Zeus is crazy. Unpredictable. You can't just let it loose."

"On the contrary, Zeus is extremely predictable." Cross began to pace back and forth, wondering just how to explain what he _knew_, what he knew but could never form into meaningful communication, to his Wisemen. "He isn't concerned about much outside the welfare of himself and his sister. He hates Blackwatch, he hates Redlight, and he doesn't care about anything else. Tactically, he's an extremely powerful adversary that we don't need to fight. Zeus isn't spreading the virus, he's just existing – he doesn't _have_ to be Blackwatch's problem, that's just the way things currently are."

Before he could try to explain further, Cross's communicator beeped. Gritting his teeth, he reached down and tugged it free from his belt, flipping it open.

"Armor command to Team Wiseman. Captain, are you there?" The voice on the other end did not sound remotely happy.

"Yes, Cross here. Let me guess, this is about that hive onsite?" He peered over the building's edge. A line of armored vehicles was trundling down the block.

"Your intuition is shocking. With all due respect, sir," and the tone did not suggest much at all, "you didn't have clearance to destroy it."

"Team Wiseman has been holding its position since orders were relayed. No action against the hive was taken."

"Then why the fuck is it totaled?"

Cross shrugged. "Damned if I know. It just collapsed in on itself a minute ago. If I had to guess, the viral growths destroyed the building's frame. Or they punctured a gas main."

From the long silence that stretched afterwards, the APC commander was unsatisfied, but didn't question the statement. The Wiseman Team was elite. If they said it happened, it happened.

"All right, false alarm," he shouted back to his own men. "Onto the next target. Get that armor in gear!"

Working with Mercer got things done, but it inevitably had to stay off the record. For now.

0o0o0

The evening sunset had long since given way to dusk as Alex slid past the door into his shared apartment. Dana had a strict 'no window entries' policy, which was obeyed dutifully whenever she was present; instead of slipping through the window into their living room, Alex climbed through the elevator shaft on the roof, shimmied down to the sixth floor, squeezed through, and then used the door like a normal person. He had a feeling that Dana would not be impressed with this other method of access, but he was never comfortable travelling ground level amongst the crowds. It was too suffocating, too claustrophobic, packed in with all of those bodies and heartbeats and systems, all talking and moving and perpetuating their existences in a world that could crush them as easily as flies. And whenever contingents of soldiers marched by, all of his reflexes screamed to attack before he could be attacked, to tear up the streets with spikes and tentacles and blades - to tear all possible threats limb from limb, just as they hunted him. It was better for everyone if he kept to his own slice of New York, and out of the overwhelming ebb and flow of the throbbing masses.

"Dana?" he called softly, in case she was asleep – he could hear her not-quite-even breaths and knew she wasn't, but that was just another one of those things he was supposed to pretend. "Dana, I'm home."

There was a rustling sound from her room as a pen and a leaf of paper were set down. Moments later, the door swung open, and a rather-tired looking Dana emerged into the kitchen. He went forth to meet her.

"Hey," she said in greeting. He could feel the apprehension radiating off of her in waves. "So, uh…"

"There was a hive down in Greenwich. There isn't one now."

"Oh, good." And the relief was clear, even to him. It pained him that he was the cause of so much worrying on her behalf; killing civilians was regrettable when it happened, but the knowledge that he was scaring Dana wracked him with far more guilt than the act itself.

He shrugged, not really sure what to say to that.

"Do you want some tea?" she asked mechanically. "I was just about to make some."

The corner of her mouth creased downwards at his shake of the head; wholly expected, but some sliver of her always hoped that he'd say yes. "All right," she said as she headed towards the counter, filling up a single mug with tap water and rummaging through the cupboards. The lone cup swirled around in the microwave in disorienting silence. She knew it wasn't important; it wasn't like her life revolved around decaf chamomile, but it still pressed on her with more weight than it had any right to. Alex was nice, or at least he tried – and that was more than she could say of how he used to be, before their reunion – but he was so _distant_. Maybe that was why it seemed there was a wall between him and her, something that they ceaselessly tried to break through but never quite managed. Sometimes, she felt like they had nothing in common anymore. The amnesiac Alex didn't scorn her or ignore her like his previous self often would, but they couldn't even enjoy a simple mug of tea together.

And then there were the things _he _could do that she could not… She shivered despite herself. Something had happened to him; whatever had been going on at Gentek had caused him to both lose his memory and gain powers both incredible and terrifying. He was scarier but gentler, restless but always willing to spend time with her; like all of her old brother's values put into a photo negative. It was almost like he was a different person entirely…

Dana finished steeping the tea bag and stirred in a delicate balance of honey and sugar. When she turned around, she found that Alex had soundlessly slipped into one of the kitchen chairs and was waiting for her.

"No ice?" he queried as she brought her drink to the table.

She fumbled, spilling a little on herself; she'd been too deep in thought to pay proper attention when making it. "Ah, dammit," she cursed as she wiped furiously at the hot liquid on her sleeve. "Good call."

Alex watched as she took some ice cubes from the freezer's generator; it groaned and whirred as it automatically produced more ice. She always seemed so… sad? That didn't seem like the right word, but it wasn't like he really understood others' feelings on any level. His memories were surprisingly useless when it came to figuring out such things – he could vicariously experience those powerful rushes of emotion from different lives if he focused, but they slipped away when he tried applying them and comparing them to real-time events. Still, from what rudimentary understanding he had, she always seemed a little melancholy, and he wondered if it was something he was doing wrong.

And speaking of doing things wrong, he needed to have a talk. It was something that he didn't necessarily want to discuss, but she had a right to know. He licked his lips habitually, unsure of where to start.

"Dana, what would you say if I told you that one of Blackwatch's captains asked for my aid in uprooting their organization?"

She fumbled again, this time dropping an ice cube. It skidded across the tile, but she paid it no heed. "It's a trap," she replied immediately. "Don't fall for it, Alex."

Alex was a little touched on how many levels she was still looking out for him – and a little exasperated on how ridiculous it was that _she_ would be the one looking out for _him_. He fiddled with his hood. As much as he tried to reciprocate, he had a nagging suspicion that he caused more trouble for her than he averted. "I… don't think that's what's going on. This guy, he's the same one that I worked with when I stopped the nuke. He's been helping us since. There's a reason we haven't been tracked down yet."

His sister chewed her lip. She was none too fond of Blackwatch; the entire incident in her old apartment was still the source of many of her nightmares. And with everything she'd seen on their records, all the times they'd tried to kill her brother... they were barely a step up from the Infected in her books. "Who was that guy again?"

"Captain Cross. He's the leader of the Wiseman team, one of Blackwatch's elite forces. Also one of their most experienced vets."

Dana frowned. "This Cross character… what do you make of him?"

"Cross?" Alex snorted. "He's a dick. Just not as much of a dick as the rest of them. He's the type who won't follow orders if he thinks something's wrong, which is more than you can say for pretty much anyone who joins up with them. If he was the one calling the shots, Blackwatch might actually be a respectable organization. Still populated with a ton of psychos, but I think Cross would focus more on the 'fixing' aspect of problems and less on the 'creating' part. He's… about as close as you can come to being a good guy in Blackwatch."

"Good guys don't usually stage coup d'états," Dana pointed out reasonably.

"Yeah, well, I said _close_ to a good guy. In any case, I know he'd make a better leader than the current ones." He hesitated. "He also promised to stop hunting us down."

"Oh." Comprehension finally dawned in her eyes; they widened infinitesimally for a moment. She blinked twice, then lifted her glass of tea as if only just remembering she had it. She took a long swig. "I see."

Her brother nodded.

"I still don't like it."

"Neither do I. But it's an opportunity that I can't really ignore." Alex wasn't going to mention Dana's place in all of this – military minds such as Cross and himself could easily see the gaping abyss that threatened to swallow her up, but she deserved to have the peace of mind she'd have been able to live with if he hadn't dragged her into his mess in the first place. "Like I said, Cross has been helping us. I return favors."

The frown lines around her eyes deepened. "And if he's been lying to you all along because he knows that?"

He shrugged. "Then I kill him."

As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted it. Damn it, he always tried to avoid this. A single tremor rattled Dana's hand at the less-than-subtle reminder of what her brother regularly did. Such evidence was inevitably going to crop up no matter how much either of them tried to look the other way, but every little flinch of hers _hurt_, perceptibly, in a way that no amount of artillery and all-devouring explosions could manage to size up to.

A little while passed quietly, neither one knowing what to say. Dana took a draught of tea while Alex gazed resolutely at his folded hands.

"Look, Alex, please. If you're going to go and do this… be careful, all right?"

Anything to change the subject. "Aren't I always?"

"No, you're not. You're one of the least careful people I've ever met. You're just really good at enduring whatever the hell you charge into." The stern effect was ruined by a wide yawn. "You know me, I worry. But it's not like I can stop you, can I? It's getting damned late. 'Night, Alex."

"I… Good night, Dana."

She pulled out of her chair and left the kitchen; alone, the virus that had once been Alex Mercer remained still. His sister's cup of tea was unfinished – he stared into the amber liquid for quite some time, gazing without seeing as rustling fabric whispered from the room beside. The warm light that crept under the crack below the door winked out, and his sister went to bed.

Gradually, her breathing drifted off into a slow and regular rhythm. Feeling almost intrusive, he silently pulled open the door to the apartment's single bedroom – technically theirs, but functionally hers – and looked down upon her. She seemed so peaceful, one arm wrapped around her pillow and the other clutching a blanket, with all of the stress cleared from her face. A soothing rest, an ability to drop out of reality without slipping into the lives of a thousand dead men – what he wouldn't have given for that. But at least Dana still had it. Taking care not to wake her with any noise, he drew back and carefully shut the door again.

He could sleep, but it wasn't something he needed very often – or something he was fond of doing, for that matter. He was uncomfortable with the thought of being unaware and vulnerable for any period of time, and even if it helped him regenerate, it wasn't worth the damning nightmares that plagued him. It was one thing to wake up from a frightening dream, pursued by death. It was another to wake up and find yourself the creature that served as pursuit, and to know that every second of the dream had been true, every sensation – the abject, hopeless terror of his victims, the last moments of agony as they were dissolved from the inside out. And then there were the other dreams, his failures – the desperate chase seemed burned into his mind, the Leader Hunter with Dana crying in its gargantuan fist. Or unleashing Greene upon the city. There was no escaping such nightmares, because they were real.

He wondered if Dana dreamt about the same things – horror and pain, all of those things she never would have experienced if the first Alex Mercer hadn't tried to tear apart the world upon his death. Or did she still manage to have peace at night, despite everything?

Alex hesitated. She was asleep now, and it was time for him to take his leave – but was it really right for him to leave at night, when she was unaware and unable to protect herself at all? If he _couldn't_ trust Cross… then Blackwatch knew where they were, and could come any time she was unprotected. Yes, he really _should_ stay, his conscience demanded. He looked at the living room's wide window and bit his lip. He was just being paranoid. She was safe here, and he did not need respite in the same way she did.

And outside, Manhattan's starless night beckoned.


	3. Dangerous Waters

Dana Mercer woke up in a groggy stupor, something that was by no means uncommon for her.

She rolled over and punched her pillow bad-naturedly, mumbling something incomprehensive about coffee. Once it became clear to her that she was not going to fall asleep again, she pulled herself up into a kneeling position, still half under her covers. Stupid world, making her get up.

"Aleeeeeex!" she called, wiping her hand across her forehead. "Coffee!"

Her brother was very good at snapping to her requests with all haste – a photo negative of his pre-amnesiac self, who couldn't so much as be bothered to pretend he was paying attention when she talked. So when no footsteps and coffee grinding came from the kitchen, she frowned and somewhat reluctantly got up. After shucking off her nightgown in exchange for some faded jeans and a sweater, she eyed the wall-mounted clock. The hour hand had almost trundled past the ten.

Damn. She'd overslept.

Alex had a tendency to leave in the middle of the morning – to do his Alexy god-knows-what things, she wasn't sure she wanted to know – and she always tried to get up before he went out. He'd be back some time before noon, give or take, but she liked waking up to having her brother around, especially after five years of mixed dorming with crazy roommates and living alone. Well, Alex probably counted as a crazy roommate, but at least he was a familiar crazy roommate. Sort of.

Okay, so she'd had better roommates than Alex. His... oddities... definitely counted as more than a few foibles and quirks to get used to, and she'd be lying if she said that he didn't still frighten her sometimes. For the love of _god_, she wished he'd turn on the lights when he was home at night; he didn't seem to realize that practically materializing out of the darkness to say hello was not acceptable in a city still stricken with the zombie apocalypse. But even after two months, she still couldn't get over it; that somebody, her brother - her _brother_, _Alex_, of all people - was genuinely happy to have her around. Sometimes, she'd just catch him staring into space in her direction, the edges of his mouth turned up just enough to soften that hawkish expression of his into something gentle. Her brother, _smiling!_ She hadn't seen Alex smile since the days he'd been looking after her in the orphanage, and she'd been so young at the time that she might have just been imagining it. It was...

Maybe this was what having a big brother was actually like.

Still rubbing her eyes, she staggered over to the kitchen and jabbed at the coffee machine's buttons. It whirred and groaned for several seconds before spitting a stream of coffee onto the conspicuously empty countertop. With a curse, she grabbed a mug from the cabinet overhead and shoved it under the nozzle, thankfully catching the rest.

She eyed the spill dubiously, then her coffee, and decided that the spill was going to have to wait.

They were out of cream – damn, why hadn't she gotten any yesterday? So Dana took her coffee black, grimacing slightly at the unmasked bitterness. It was strong stuff, but it was worth it, so long as it woke her up.

She was in the process of looking for a rag to soak up the mess when the doorbell rang.

Dana frowned as she made her way through the living room. She hadn't invited any friends over, and the thought of Alex having company was laughable. She couldn't imagine who'd be coming around this early anyways. It was somewhat curiously – and by no means devoid of irritation – that she unlocked and opened the door, revealing a complete stranger.

He was a rather odd man; tall, with dark grey hair shot through with a single stripe of white. His tanned skin stood out starkly against the beige suit and dark slacks he wore. He looked like he was in his early forties, but there was a seriousness in his eyes that bespoke longer than that.

She couldn't really have cared less.

"No, I don't want to buy anything." Dana rolled her eyes and made to shut the door before he could start his likely spiel on how she needed a deluxe vacuum cleaner, or that her apartment was infested with owls. "Go away."

The stranger's foot was suddenly in the way. Goddamnit, he actually looked _amused_. Her brow creased.

"Is that how you greet everyone?" His voice might have sounded like that of a venerable gentleman, had it not been dripping with condescension.

"I mean it." She gave him a shove, only to find that he was quite firmly entrenched where he was. "Quit fucking with me."

"You're not the only one losing their patience."

"I don't believe this," Dana muttered, looking up to the ceiling. "This is a private fucking residence," she raged. "I don't know how we fucking got onto your lists, but-"

"I know this is a private residence." The stranger's voice was suddenly smooth and very dangerous. "It's probably the most prudent thing to do when you're living with the most wanted man in the United States."

She froze. Slowly, ever so slowly, she turned back to face him. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You're going to need to work on the lies," he noted, still neutral. "You waited much too long for that to be any sort of convincing denial, and that look on your face doesn't need anything more to tell me that you know at least something of what I'm talking about. And even if you _did _know how to lie well enough to trick somebody extensively trained in interrogation such as myself, it does you little good, because rest assured I already knew everything about this apartment and its rather intriguing pair of residents before coming here. Now," and here, he pushed forward with considerably more success than Dana had, shutting the door behind him and giving the apartment a brief visual scan. "I'm going to be generous. Let's forget that all happened and start over again."

He turned his eyes back on Dana. It was strange – with her pretenses gone, he could see a ghost of her brother's features upon her, some common sibling traits. Those eyes – he hadn't even been sure that intense blue was a natural eye color, but apparently it was. There was that same perpetually guarded cast around her cheekbones and brow. And the way she was half-crouching, slipping into a defensive position that would do her no good without even realizing it… it was odd, seeing those similarities juxtaposed against the vast spread of differences. This girl was weak, only human – entirely under his power.

"Who the hell are you?" she demanded.

"Captain Cross of the Wiseman team. You're Dana, I presume?"

At least that name meant something to her. She straightened up, but hardly looked any happier. If anything, her scowl deepened, but it was a different sort of scowl – more open distrust than the clear sentiment of being hunted.

He extended a hand. She made no move to shake it.

"I know who you are. And get this straight - Alex might trust you, but I don't," Dana said archly.

Cross was unfazed. "Fair enough. He's the one I came to talk to, not you." He scanned the visible doors and rooms in the apartment. "Where is he?"

"He's not here."

"What a specific answer. Where can I find him?"

"Somewhere in the city. Good luck. He always goes out in the morning – usually isn't out for long."

"Then I may as well wait." It was less of a suggestion and more of a statement; one that Dana hardly needed, given how he'd already invited himself in. In truth, he really only had about an hour and a half's leeway, but he could press harder if Mercer failed to turn up.

"Fine," she grumbled. "If you're going to come in… look, do you want some coffee?"

Cross briefly considered the odds of her making a poisoning attempt, and then realized that it was a touch too paranoid. "Yes, thanks."

He followed her into the kitchen as she started making another cup, giving the new room a quick strategic scan. It was probably much larger than his initial impression of it, given all the clutter strewn about. He couldn't imagine Mercer himself using a kitchen, so that left Dana to be the one responsible for it. She did not seem to be an organized person – pans were strewn about the countertop and piled in the sink, and the machine she was now utilizing was surrounded by a large puddle of spilt coffee. He found himself wondering at just how _normal _Dana Mercer was. Outside of the attitude, she really just seemed like a young kid trying to get her foothold in life. He'd known she couldn't be like her pseudo-brother – he was one of a kind, in more ways than one – but the original Mercer, the one she'd been related to, had been a pretty fucked-up guy, simply brimming with abnormal psyche diagnoses that she apparently hadn't inherited. And genetics aside, given what she was living with, he'd been expecting somebody… jumpier.

"Quit staring at me," was the object of his rumination's warm way of telling him that his drink was ready.

He sampled the coffee and nodded appraisingly. "Hell of a lot better than the military stuff," he commented, taking another swig.

Dana shrugged, not in the mood for pleasantries. "So what the hell is this business of yours? Alex told me you'd asked him for something to do with your apparent power trip. He didn't say you were going to make yourself at home here and ruin my morning. If you're just going to sit around, I want some answers, because I really do not understand why you Blackwatch assholes would work with my brother. Or why he'd work with you, for that matter."

The captain raised his eyebrows. She was certainly forthright. Then again, she could afford to prod for information, what with having the bodyguard of a brother that she did.

"Blackwatch as a whole does not work with Zeus-"

"Alex," she cut him off.

Cross folded his arms. "It's what we call him. Surely you've heard it. It's everywhere; even the news stations got a hold of it early on."

"Yeah, I have. But he's already got a name. It's Alex Mercer. For the record, he really hates that codename. So do I, but he's likelier to tear your face off for it."

Hmm. Touchy subject. Cross filed that one in the back of his mind for later. "Fine. Blackwatch isn't working with your brother. They're still trying to hunt him down. I'm not as blind as the rest of them – as long as _Alex_ isn't running around tearing up Manhattan, he's not our problem. Making him our problem, as we currently are – I'm sure you realize just how… _unproductive_ that is. Nobody above me will take that, so I plan to get above everyone else. In the meantime? Your brother provides me with extremely useful manpower. In turn, I'm keeping him off the map. Him and you, I might add."

Dana sighed. "Well, I guess I have to thank you for that."

Before he could reply, something creaked at the far end of the living room. Cross set down his coffee as the apartment's door opened and the subject of their conversation himself walked in.

"Dana, I'm ba-"

Alex cut himself off as he realized that his sister was not alone in the kitchen. The lack of a uniform threw him off for a second, but he was able to recognize the guest almost instantly.

Cross froze. "Mercer-"

All of last night's doubts came bubbling up to the forefront of his mind; all of those veiled threats and Dana's warnings and _why the fuck was he in his apartment_ – with a snarl that was more animal than human, he crossed the living room in a single standing leap and slammed into the captain with deadly precision. Cross was driven into a wall of cabinets with enough force to crush them, assaulting the unfortunate man with a spill of silverware and cast-iron pans as well as splintered wood. Dana gave a shocked cry at the spectacle, but her infuriated brother ignored it, his arm flattening into his trademark cruel-looking blade.

"Get the hell away from my sister," he snarled, inches from Cross's face, his blade positioned somewhere above his torso.

Great. Cross had seen the footage of that leader hunter, of the unfortunate soldier in Dana's first apartment. It was hardly a secret that the Blacklight virus had a protective streak a mile wide where his sister was concerned – and given his comments last night, alongside Zeus's typical tendency to act without thinking, it didn't take a genius to figure out what position he'd landed himself in. He'd come to their apartment unannounced simply because he couldn't pass up a chance to get one in over the man, but it belatedly occurred to him that catching Mercer off guard was a bad idea for both parties. He tried to turn his face away, but was roughly jostled back into place by the infuriated virus. "Goddammit, Mercer, take a breath mint."

"What. The fuck. Are you doing here," Alex hissed, bringing his blade close enough to tear the captain's clothes. Cross felt the strangely warm but sharp edge of the razor on his skin and wished briefly that wearing civilian clothes was not something necessary on making incognito visits.

Cross was spared trying to choke out an answer when Dana snatched up one of the scattered pans and threw it with all her might. It didn't do anything more to her brother than bounce off harmlessly, but it got his attention.

"Alex, get the fuck away from him this instant!"

And miraculously, he did; the crushing pressure vanished as Zeus slid back, managing to look wary, startled, confused, and distinctly unhappy all at the same time. "Dana, he-"

"I don't want to hear it!" she raged. "Are you crazy? What the fuck was that for? You just…" She gesticulated wildly, searching for words. "God damn it, I _told _you you needed therapy. Didn't you say you trusted this guy?

"You said-"

"Whatever I said, I'm sure it didn't involve trying to _dismember_ somebody in the kitchen!"

"I… I thought…" Mercer was quickly faltering; at his side, his transformed arm slithered back into a normal human hand.

"He thought… I was here… to hold you ransom…" Cross wheezed from the floor. "Or… something equally… stupid."

"Fuck, Alex! Do you think we'd be sitting around drinking coffee if he was trying to kidnap me or something?"

"Er…" It was pretty funny, a dazed Cross thought, trying to ignore the hell of pain his midsection had become. The great Zeus could not be brought down by any weapons known to man, and yet he was almost cowering under his sister's glare, looking ridiculously sheepish.

The long-suffering look on Dana's face made it quite clear that this was not the first time something like this had happened. Although given Mercer's reclusiveness, it was probably the first time anything other than the apartment itself was the victim.

Previous hostility gone, she strode over to him, brushing past her abashed brother. She reached over to the fallen soldier, then jerked her hand back when she registered the tiny stain that was starting to spread over his beige top, around irregular ridges. "Holy shit! Alex, you fucking broke his _ribs_! Fuck, fuck, fuck, where do we keep the bandages…"

"He fixes himself." Alex was unrepentant on _that_.

"What –" Dana stopped her sudden, frantic search for first aid. "…You know what, I really don't want to know." She glanced at Cross again, clearly unsettled at the sight. "Is this true?

The captain merely grunted, willing his mixture of implants and genetic enhancements to kick in – or at least to start spitting out the painkillers. It wasn't common knowledge even among Blackwatch's hierarchy, but Cross himself was a prototype of what ended up becoming the supersoldiers. Of course, in the seventies, they hadn't possessed the understanding of Redlight that they did now, and it had basically been a genetic game of Russian Roulette that he'd been unlucky enough to get drafted for. They may as well have been trying to modify the virus's workings with a sledgehammer. He was also the only survivor, much less the only success – something Blackwatch had tried to replicate fervently until the loss of several years and hundreds of soldiers convinced them to drop the project. Even now, the higher-ranking scientists were clamoring for samples of him, bewildered at how a happy accident of nearly forty years ago could end up far more streamlined and nearly as capable as the newer models.

The implants had come later, in the nineties. They were built to circulate a constant mix of precautionary – and mostly experimental – antidotes to keep his own strain from mutating. Alongside that, they were tuned into his vitals, and accordingly released some other – and more appreciated – medications, like artificial adrenaline and painkillers. The latter of which was finally starting to kick in now, he noted with relief, and none too soon. He would never get used to the feeling of his insides squirming and knitting themselves back together – the thought of rearranging his whole body, as Zeus did, made him feel sick.

He coughed as he pulled himself back to his feet, wiping the resultant gob of blood on his already ruined shirt. "Zeus, do that again… and we're going to find out… how many volts it takes to fry you. Just because I am within several feet of her does not mean I am after your sister. I'd echo her on the therapy bit, but I'm pretty sure you're a hopeless case. And miss Mercer, how the hell do you stand living with this thing?"

"At times like these, I really have no fucking idea," Dana sighed. She turned her glare on her brother again, who was cringing like a scolded child. "You are not going to leave this apartment until these cabinets are completely fixed. There are some nails and plywood left over from the time you wrecked the windowsill, and I can go buy some varnish. No, we are not calling a repairman in again, unless _you_ want to try to explain it this time."

Cross coughed again, this time in minor embarrassment. "Actually, I came to fetch him right now. The transport's waiting for my go-between. I trust you can sort this all out after we're done?"

"What?" In the pandemonium, Dana had forgotten about the original reasons for Cross's presence. "Wait, that's _today_? Alex, you only told me about this whole thing last night. I appreciate that you're actually _telling_ me about this crap now, but do you have _any_ idea how fucking short notice that is-"

"To be fair, _I _only told _him _about it last night." For the purpose of time more than anything else, the captain decided to spare the viral monstrosity another chewing out from his sister. Although he really wished he could take a picture of Zeus's expression right now.

"...Well, damn. Repairman it is. Alex, this is all coming out of your wallet."

"_Everything_ comes out of my wallet," he replied, with the look of a condemned man who'd been given a last-minute reprieve from a firing squad.

"Oh, shut up," she grumbled. "I expect you to make this up to me later."

"Of course. Just tell me what to do." He turned to Cross. "I'm ready. The sooner we get this over with, the better. And next time, fucking tell me that you're coming, will you? How did you even know I'd be here, anyways?"

"Just because Blackwatch doesn't have surveillance here doesn't mean _I_ don't. You stick to a predictable enough routine for me to catch you here, although I would appreciate a reduced amount of unprovoked attacks if I ever have to do this again. Anyway, let's go." He nodded to Dana. "Thanks for the coffee, and my sincerest condolences for getting stuck with this trigger-happy idiot."

Following him, Zeus gave a gravelly, exasperated sigh, but at least had the sense not to press the point. He did, however, resolve to search the apartment and the surrounding roofs for concealed cameras when he got back.

Dana watched them go, gnawing on her lip – a habit she was starting to develop. "Alex?" Her voice had taken a complete one-eighty from its previous tone.

He paused and craned his neck to look back at his sister.

"Stay safe," she pled. "Please."

"Sure." He made a valiant attempt at what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "Really, sis. What could go wrong?"

0o0o0

"We're here," Cross told Mercer, a statement made completely unnecessary by the large transport helicopter stationed fifteen feet away on the landing pad. "Get inside, I need to speak to the pilot."

Shrugging, Alex went to the back of the sable machine, running a hand over its side as he went. It was bulky, not remotely like the sleek gunships he loved to fly, made for carrying troops rather than the arts of war. All in all, entirely uninteresting to him. He opened the helicopter's back door, and realized it was going to be a damn long ride.

Two long rows of seats – if they could be called that – spanned the transport's interior. The Wiseman team had crammed itself on one of the benches; presumably to avoid sharing the other, open bench with him. That was fine with Mercer - sharing a room with Blackwatch operatives for half an hour was already pushing it. Sitting shoulder to shoulder with them would probably result in severed heads and entrails everywhere the first time one of them so much as twitched.

A number of distrustful glares were turned on Alex as he sat down in the middle of the free bench. He briefly considered creating enough eyes to return all of them simultaneously, but settled for staring down each man individually. It was hardly a fair staring contest, seeing as all of Cross's men were wearing helmets that obscured their eyes, and Alex didn't need to blink, so it persisted up until the captain entered the transport.

"All right," Cross barked, slamming the door shut behind him. He eyed the seating arrangements with exasperation, then took a place at the end of the mostly deserted bench. "Enough screwing around. You know the plan, men. Mercer's along for the ride – he's not joining the team, so pull your heads out of your asses and bear with it for the day."

"Damned glad I'm not," the virus in question muttered.

The captain turned to glare at him. "Quiet."

"Oh?" He looked up, smirking. That sounded like a challenge. "I'm not one of your men, Cross. I don't follow orders – I listen to them and occasionally go along if you ask nicely."

"No, you're not one of my men, which means I have no qualms about putting several rounds through your head and then jamming a shock baton up your ass."

"Touche." He leaned back, sprawling across the bench in an intentionally ostentatious effort to get comfortable. Under him, the engines rumbled and the helicopter pulled away from the ground.

The tension in the tight space was more than palpable; it was crushing. Every one of Cross's men had their eyes trained on Mercer, and some of them were even fidgeting. Alex himself was stretched out, looking as unaffected and bored as he possibly could – but mentally, he was creating a map of the transport's layout and the weapon arrangements in case this whole thing turned out to be a trap. He doubted it – Cross _had_ to know better by now than to pick fights with him – but the idea of the helicopter exploding into gunfire and chaos was much more fun than an uneventful ride with a bunch of people that, by proxy, ranked extremely high on his hate list.

He was well aware that he was plunging into dangerous waters getting involved in Cross's schemas - if he was caught meddling in Blackwatch's affairs, his only ally within the beast would be removed, and the odds of him ever managing to slide off the radar with his sister in tow were slim. But if he tried to keep playing things as it were... Cross was right. He had to wrap things up, for his sister's sake.

"Hmm." Mercer tapped his foot, cold eyes glittering in the shadows that perpetually shrouded his face. "You know, captain, this all seems a little complex. This plan would work perfectly well if you let one of your own men play the part. They'd all be quite willing to throw themselves down for your glorious ascent."

Cross's eyes flashed. "I don't play god with the lives of my men."

Zeus flipped his palms up. "Just an observation."

"Well, rest assured I've put plenty of thought into this, and this is the neatest way to do it."

One of the Wisemen snorted. "Yeah. This way, the only setback is that you probably won't die from it, germ."

Captain Cross turned. "Enough, Black."

Alex smirked, leaning back. He was none too fond of the derogative, but it was hardly new to him, and the fact that his presence alone was visibly upsetting the mooks was enough to make up for it at the moment.

Although it did remind him…

"…Cross."

The captain's head turned to face the gravelly voice. Mercer's eyes were locked on him; his gaze as fathomless and unnervingly intense as ever.

"What?"

"Tell me, and be honest. Do you ever think Blackwatch will succeed in entirely eradicating the infection from Manhattan?"

Cross's brow furrowed. "It won't be easy work. Redlight's nasty stuff, and the conditions in Manhattan – tightly packed living, so on – favor its spread. But it's headless now – we can kill it faster than it can multiply, and it doesn't have any organized resistance. There's no strategy anymore, just nature working at its grittiest. And Blackwatch deserves more credit than you give us. We'll have it burned out by the year's end."

The serious eyes flickered for a moment. When he spoke again, a certain harsh quality was gone from his words. It was almost… hesitant – if Mercer's voice could ever be hesitant. "And… what happens then?"

"For you?" The captain snorted. "Figure that one out yourself, Mercer. I'm not your guidance counselor."

A couple of his men snickered static laughter, and the virus's eyes narrowed dangerously. _God,_ Cross thought. It was like mediating a bunch of two-year-olds. Two-year-olds with guns and tentacles. He was going to need some words for his men later. For now, the only thing to do was to keep distracting them. "All right, enough. Mercer, assume the part."

Several muffled grunts came from his subordinates as Zeus's skin and clothing distorted into a swirling, shuddering mass of mottled grey and black. He didn't even bother to stand up, simply shifting where he sat. The freakish spectacle was over as quickly as it had begun; the exposed, formless biomass quickly solidified into a perfect imitation of the black uniforms that they themselves were wearing.

"Fuck, now that seat has Zeus all over it," Detwiller muttered disgustedly. He turned to another one of the soldiers. "Remind me to never flag down this transport again, Winder."

Alex rolled his eyes, then realized nobody could see it. He thought for a moment, deciding to go with leaning back and making a point of rubbing himself all over his bench. It was all for show – the hell was he going to let any of the active virus get outside of him – but he couldn't pass by any opportunity to piss off Blackwatch. He couldn't kill all of the bastards and be done with it, which was a downside, but they couldn't attack him either, so he could do pretty much whatever non-lethal crap he wanted and then watch them squirm.

At the far end of his bench, he saw the captain clap a hand to his forehead, and he smirked.

Detwiller made another repulsed noise. "Enjoying yourself, germ?"

"Afraid I can't, not when all of you have your heads still attached," Mercer said casually. The effect was strangled by the helmet he was wearing, but he couldn't be bothered to change it back.

"Mercer, can it." That was Cross, who had obviously realized that a situation was brewing, and wanted to defuse it as fast as possible.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Captain. I'm just not used to having to sit down next to a bunch of deranged moral black holes and not get to finger-paint with their viscera. It's really not the same when all of these assholes' organs aren't on the outside."

"The fuck?" Black leaned forward in his seat. "_You're_ calling us deranged? Says the freak accident that runs around New York City murdering everything that moves for kicks?"

"Takes one to know one." Alex tapped his helmet. "As for the murdering, your friends in here enjoyed it a lot more. Thankfully, they're no longer in a position to do so. It was funny. They were always thinking about their wives and kids back home. In fact, they loved using them to rationalize gunning down fleeing women and children, ones that didn't even show any signs of infection. I can't figure out if you _humans_ were all made to enjoy killing or if that's something you had to learn. But if the kid running into your arms for protection isn't your own, then I guess he's just so much target practice, right? That's what they thought. It was always the same – different faces, same scene, same turnout. They shot him and laughed."

"You fucking-" The private went for his gun.

"All right, _enough,_" Cross interjected. "The next person to speak is either getting two months of janitorial duty or several canisters of Bloodtox to the face. I am deadly fucking serious."

Mercer grunted, but settled back. Black still looked like he wanted to strangle the man-turned-virus, but thankfully was obedient enough to get back in his chair and restrain himself to returning Zeus's disgusted glare.

Mercifully, it wasn't long until the helicopter began to descend, signaling the end of a ride that Cross was sure had given him several new grey hairs.

Zeus was the first one out the door when they landed; now on a different landing pad, surrounded by a complex of massive, featureless buildings. To the southwest, some of the city was visible. After a few moments of looking around there, Alex blinked, then snorted. "Your top-secret base is in _Brooklyn_?" he laughed. "If only I'd have known… I thought this place was just another one of your run-of-the-mill bases. That's certainly what a lot of your ex-soldiers seemed to think, anyways."

"That's because they didn't know," Cross said flatly, coming up beside him, his team filing in a line close behind. "A lot of our policy has been centered around you, you know – we're constantly having to mislead our rank and file soldiers just to waylay you. Of course, feeding them false information tends to cause its own problems, but that whole mess in policy wasn't my idea. This is only a temporary center. We've moved a lot of our field operations here since the start of the Outbreak, but we've still got most of our facilities at Fort Detrick. Samson, however, is here to oversee the effort, and that's all you need to know."

"You're just going to tell him where the main base is?" Detwiller asked incredulously. "Maryland is-"

Without so much as looking at the soldier, Cross snapped his leg around and kicked him in the shin. "Do you honestly think I'd give Mercer that sort of intel? He already knows it. He also has no way of getting there. I may not mind questions, but you're beginning to insult my intelligence, lieutenant."

Detwiller stumbled, but quickly snapped back to position. "Yes, sir! My apologies, sir!"

"Good. I don't want to hear it again."

Movement on the nearest building caught everyone's eye; a previously seamless panel was sliding up, separated from the rest of the wall, and from that doorway, a Blackwatch representative was approaching.

"All right, it's on," the captain hissed in a quiet aside. "Mercer, remember the part. If I hear of _any_ deviations from the plan, I am going to kill you myself."

"Oh, enough grandstanding. It's showtime," Alex muttered, his voice distorted and muffled – and ever so dangerous – through the helmet's filters.

Captain Cross nodded. "Indeed."


	4. Into the Web

General Samson was not the happiest of men as he strode into the conference room, trying to mask impatience with an air of power and confidence.

It was a waste of time. Formalities be damned, he had work to do – teams to organize, research to prepare, enemies to be put down. He wasn't a fool – he didn't have a stable grasp on power, especially after attempting to discredit Cross had failed to raise any action against the man. The Reagan incident had raised suspicion momentarily, but the veteran's history was just too strong to topple on claims that were sketchy at best. He needed another way to keep Cross – and all other potential rivals, but Cross was currently by far the most imposing – away from his seat of power. The man was too difficult to kill directly, not without drawing dangerous attention, and permanently eliminating him would be depriving Blackwatch of a very useful asset anyways. No – but perhaps he could reveal he part of Cross's records that most of Blackwatch _didn't _see. A little spin, a few leaks; how much would the men like hearing that their living legend was a loosely-controlled Infected experiment?

The object of his thoughts was standing as still as a post at the end of a semicircle of first lieutenants. As always, those damnable green eyes were unreadable. Robert Cross wasn't the only captain here – every officer who'd put forth an accepted recommendation for their men this month was here, but the other five or so leaders practically slipped his notice. He really did not like having to deal with Cross.

He also didn't like personally handing out promotions – he didn't see what the deal was with 'inspiration' and 'due attention for services rendered' – he had his work to do, and he was quite sure that somebody else could bump up these fifteen or so candidates from first lieutenant to major without his presence. And yet, here he was, trying to act like he had the time for it.

The room was flavorless – grey carpet, grey walls, vaguely curved in shape, a metal table and matching chairs on the end of the wall. All efficient functionality and no comfort – all in all, he missed his office with its rich cherry wood paneling and plush armchair. He'd wasted no time in personalizing Randall's vacant rooms; no need to feel like he was occupying the space of a dead man. He was the general now, and anyone who had a problem with it was very quickly going to learn how much power he had at his disposal.

Everyone was looking at him expectantly – the guards stationed at the doorways, the lieutenants, the captains and platoon leaders. While he didn't mind commanding that sort of attention, it was a pain in the ass to deliver.

He cleared his throat. Time to just get it over with and be done with it.

"You all know why you're here," he declared. "To everyone who's present, I want to thank you. You've dedicated your lives in service of your country. Our work is inglorious, our accomplishments unsung. When you joined the military, perhaps you expected to strut about as a respectable veteran, with medals of honor strung around your neck and citizens thanking you on bended knee. But instead, you're working in the shadows. And know this – you're working for something much greater."

He began to slowly and deliberately stride up and down the room, before the assembled troops.

"You've all been brave men. You've held the red line. You've seen hell, you've went through hell. You've gone up to hell and told him to fuck off – and you got hell to listen. And the reason you're here is because your superiors have noticed that."

He paused in his speech. One of them was holding himself poorly; not nearly as straight enough as any man should have been in the presence of his general. Samson ceased his pacing before the soldier; the man tensed, almost imperceptibly, but made no move to correct his posture. Samson smacked him with the butt of his rifle.

"Stand straight, lieutenant!" he roared. To the soldier's credit, he did not stumble at all, merely snapping to a better position.

"Yes, sir!"

"Good. I don't want to see any of that disgraceful shit. I am your general, and it's thanks to me that you're standing here right now. I could just as easily arrange for you to be cleaning the latrines for the rest of your goddamn career. Am I clear?"

"Yes, sir!"

The two soldiers flanking the reprimanded one shifted uncomfortably, edging away a step. Samson jerked his head slightly, trying to remember where exactly he'd been in his lines.

"Right. First Lieutenants, I'm speaking to you. As you all damn well know, hell isn't done with us yet. Sometimes, when a man joins us, he gets off easy – some spec ops work, some assassinations, some odd jobs, and his work in the army is done. This is not one of those times. This country," and here, he gestured to the unbroken walls as if one might be able to look through them and see the city outside, "is currently facing the greatest threat it's ever seen. The United States of America has lived with the possibility of nuclear warfare for sixty years, started wars over our assets, and stood tall through countless acts of terrorism. But so far, our country has faced men alone. Powerful men, men with many tools at their disposal – but still men.

"What we fight now has no face. It feels no emotions and has no reason. It exists for only one thing – a single-minded determination to spread. It infects, it warps, it kills. If it escapes, the virus _will_ destroy humanity as we've known it. But it won't. Blackwatch was _made_ to combat this threat, and _that_ is what you're all a part of. This country has seen Redlight before, but prior to recent events, it had never breached security and entered the public eye. Things are bloody out there in Manhattan, there's no denying it… but we've burned out the disease before. What's different now - you know the crux of it. Zeus. You've all seen that thing. Maybe even with your own eyes. It's not Redlight – it's something else entirely. Something worse. _It's _what's keeping Redlight thriving and twisting NYC into an infernal hellscape in spite of all the blood we've shed. Zeus is a monster, the likes of which we've never seen. Manhattan is its playground; it paints the asphalt with the blood of this nation's best and bravest men, your comrades in arms. And it knows no fear. It ignores traditional rounds, ballistic and explosive alike. It can withstand extreme temperatures and even harsher physical duress. Two separate attempts to hinder it biologically only saw temporary success, and caused no lasting damage. To top it off, evidence points to Zeus having been in close proximity to the nuclear weapon that went off in the bay nine weeks ago, and subsequently surviving that. Offensively – I don't need to say it, only this. Even after two and a half months of warring with it, we still don't know what it's capable of.

"And truthfully, we do not give a fuck about this."

He raised his voice. "We are _Blackwatch_! We do. Not. Fail! We are the _last_ line of defense!"

A raw-throated cheer sprang from his rapt audience.

"We _will _prevail! We will not give up. We will _find a way._ We will hunt until that sick abomination is cornered. We will fight until there's nothing _left_ of that miserable fuck. This is not and will not be an easy thing to accomplish. We've lost many men in our struggles, many leaders whose roles must be filled again. These are the times for able young men to climb the ranks. You _are_ those young men. In recognition of your service, you're all being promoted to the rank of Major."

The gathered soldiers all snapped their hands to their foreheads in a salute. "We are honored, sir!"

Finishing his last cross of the room, Samson finally stopped at the end of the line, reaching into his pack. His gloved digits met the ridged edges of the badges within; he closed his hand around the topmost one and drew it out.

"Congratulations, son," he said to the closest soldier. Nothing could be seen through the newly-designated major's helmet, but the man was looking up in apparent eagerness. Samson's return smile was genuine – here he was, with the power to boost somebody's career and define their future. He remembered similar days, where Randall had stood before him - stood where he stood now. A static exhale of breath rippled through the soldier's mic as his hand reached out towards his own –

Something glinted.

It was in the corner of his vision; just a glimpse, a flash of light. A flicker of movement. But Samson had served his time among Blackwatch's rank-and-file; despite his arrogant attitude, those days had never left him – hell, as if they could ever be forgotten. Just because he'd moved up the ladder didn't mean he'd lost his touch. The general's instincts, at least, were as sharp as a razor's edge.

It didn't matter in the slightest.

There was a bang, accompanied by a volley of shocked cries. Samson saw it in a peculiarly disjointed, disconnected way, a way that split every moment apart and rendered them meaningless - the lieutenant that had been slouching earlier had shifted, lifting something shiny. He'd jerked back, away from the newly promoted major, and…

The pain only seemed to register seconds later – a sting in his chest, like an angry wasp had gotten caught in his uniform. His jaw went slack, and the sharp sensation flared briefly before spinning away almost entirely. It was strange; all of the color was leeching out of the room, dripping to the corners of his sight and then fading entirely. Comprehension only returned to him as his knees gave way and he slid to the floor.

There was another crack, a thud – agitated voices, all meaningless as his head snapped back, lolling bonelessly against the carpet. His eyes slid down to his chest. A clean shot; there was a neat little hole right next to his heart, thick and dark around the edges. That darkness spread – across his torso, across the room, somehow stemming from the corners of his line of sight rather than the center.

As his vision swam and spiraled, Samson caught his final glimpses of the world – that expressionless face, those _damned_ eyes fixed on him. And he knew; oh, he knew. The old bastard – there was just a hint of victory visible on his face.

He tried to voice his outrage, to tear the veteran down with him, but his tongue felt thick and unruly in his mouth and tasted like rust. All he could manage was a stuttering gurgle that choked off his last chance for retribution.

…_I guess you were faster…_ he thought, and then there was nothing.

0o0o0

Cross had been wondering just when the disguised Mercer was going to get on with it. He'd known Zeus to be miserably impatient, and when nobody had died in the first two minutes, he'd begun to worry that the virus somehow wasn't here at all, and had slipped off somewhere else in the base.

Thankfully, he didn't disappoint; as Samson began to hand out the badges befitting the soldiers' new rank, one of the men near the middle of the line had pulled a modified pistol from his belt with practiced, fluid ease, and fired off a shot in the same breath.

Several exclamations followed as the first lieutenants scrambled for their guns, but Cross was ready – his own was already out and cocked. Without hesitating, he pulled the trigger and fired off a single bullet, straight through Mercer's head.

He'd watched the virus shrug off that same injury and worse, but this time, he dutifully crumpled to the ground in a defeated, unrepaired heap, without as much as a flicker of unnatural red and black around what would have been a mortal wound for anyone else.

It surprised him, but there was really no gratification in shooting Mercer and knowing he wouldn't fight back, no satisfied revenge or even feeling as though he'd gotten one in over him. It was just duty, a necessary reaction for show, and he was simply glad that he'd been able to procure a fake for the part instead of one of his own men.

He wasn't above killing Blackwatch soldiers, but the ones that were loyal to him, he'd do his utmost to protect.

He lowered the gun, swearing in a convincingly prepared voice as the other soldiers in the room sprang into motion. Mercer seemed to be managing to stay still on the ground – thankfully, he was capable of being serious and following instructions when strictly necessary – so he turned his eyes on Samson; the man had toppled. Zeus had made an excellent shot, nearly straight through the heart.

Bringing Mercer into the equation had given him the part he needed, but it had also created a lot of complications. For instance, the dead man was neither dead nor a man, and was going to eventually get up and walk out at some point. He had been forced to arrange a lot of things on relatively short notice, and while he was confident that he wasn't linked to what he'd had sabotaged, simply _having_ things tampered with was suspicious enough.

Things weren't foolproof – if inspected, traces of security breaches and abnormally high concentrations of Blacklight particles might turn up. The trick, Cross knew, was in preventing anyone from needing to search harder. He'd done sufficient work in preventing further investigation in this fiasco; why bother looking too closely when the details you needed to know were right on the surface?

When the matter was looked into further, it would wrap itself up. A certain private Andrew Reynolds had a history of both mental instability and insubordination, and had been placed in the meeting by mistake, having been mixed up with another man – somebody who would have to be recalled from an incorrectly given dishonorable discharge on misplaced terms of severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

But now everything was in motion, and he just had to trust that things would pan out as they were expected to. He started forward, raising his voice above the din. "Everyone, stay calm!"

Of course, nobody heeded this. Even years of regimented military conditioning were left floundering in the wake of such a calamitous 'what the hell just happened?' But it really couldn't hurt to look like he was trying to instill order.

"Get that body out of here," somebody demanded amidst the panic. "Get somebody in the morgue; we need identification."

_Good._ He latched onto that. You there." Cross pointed at the pair of guards stationed at the doors. "Take him down to the morgue; we'll have forensics down there ASAP."

_Finally,_ thought Alex Mercer from the carpet, not without a rush of relief. He was repeatedly forcing down the instinctive whirl and flow of biomass within, trying to break out into coils and wrap up his injury – and slaughter his disguise in the process. The urge to regenerate himself was overpowering; he was used to fixing every bodily complaint as quickly as he sustained them, and added to that, he was _really_ uncomfortable with only having part of a head. Really, how was he even thinking right now? He wondered idly where his functional brain was, because the one that was currently partially exposed to open air was probably not in working condition.

He fought down the urge to grunt as a swift kick was delivered to his side. Not for the first time, he wished he could open his eyes – the swish of air currents and vibrations through the floor indicated a lot of people moving at once, and he detested being left mostly unaware of what was going on. It was a titanic struggle to stay still when he felt two sets of partially-gloved hands tug at him, trying to lift him up. That was a failed gesture, despite repeated attempts.

"Damn, he's fucking heavy," grunted a voice to the right.

The mook on his left snorted. "Wish I could put some more holes in him. Goddamn bastard… what the fuck was he thinking? I…"

The soldiers quickly gave up on trying to pick up the 'corpse', and settled for half-lifting, half-dragging it through a series of hallways. Mercer had suffered far worse – he hardly noticed the sensation of most of his lower half scraping the floor and all of its ridges.

The sounds of panicked mayhem were receding into the distance. Much clearer were the rhythmic thud of flanking footsteps and the steady rustle and regular clacks of his morphed uniform sliding over rough concrete.

Alex was having a hard time keeping still. There was a reason he didn't like prolonged physical contact with anyone; to his body, touching living matter was the direct prelude to consuming them. Really, 'prolonged' implied he tolerated it at all. Dana was the only person who had a right to hug him or curl up next to him for warmth – somehow, his instincts had rewired themselves around his feelings for her alone. But outside of his sister? Being pulled along by two very warm and _alive_ beings was, on a reflexive level, akin to a person holding something delicious in their mouth and trying not to swallow.

Even worse was having to keep his eyes shut – blinding himself to his whereabouts in the core of enemy territory was stirring up a very rare panic. He focused on trying to quell that, tuning out the sharp remarks between his two carriers as he clamped down on those sentiments. He'd be damned if he let anyone or anything control him – his own instincts included. It was a relief when he felt himself roughly dragged upwards and laid down onto a cold, smooth table.

Not that it was a pleasant experience on its lonesome. Morgue tables had their own connotations for the Blacklight virus. At least this time, he was about as far from helpless as was existentially possible.

He heard a rifle being cocked and mentally groaned. Of course they weren't just going to leave the body as it was. Just because he could take a faceful of bullets without breaking a sweat didn't mean he enjoyed it.

Fortunately, one of the soldiers above him – presumably the one who hadn't lifted the gun – objected. "Hey, don't do that."

"Why the hell not? Damn traitor deserves more than a busted head."

"Yeah, I get that, but don't be fucking retarded. The base is gonna be on high alert after what happened to the General. You start shooting, we're gonna have a shit-ton of pissed off security on our asses in ten seconds. Rather not be demoted today."

"Fine, fine," the other mook conceded grudgingly, stowing away his rifle. "Still want to."

"Trust me, me too. What the hell's going to happen now?"

"Dunno, man, dunno…"

They finally left, one pausing to spit in what was left of Mercer's face.

Alex waited for the pair's footsteps to vanish well into the background before he snapped up, quite alive and all business. With a heavy sigh of relief, he stopped holding back his natural impulses and quickly regenerated his head, filling in the ruined parts and restructuring the skull.

He rolled off the table, setting his feet down as quietly as he could manage. He knew what he had to look for - he gave the room a quick once-over, relishing the fact that he was allowed to _see_ things again instead of just gauging where they were. Instead of leaving, he crossed over to a metal wall, just where Cross had told him to look. He laid his hands on the smooth surface, feeling for a handle; his deft fingers quickly found it. A burst of cold air rushed over and around him as he reached into the refrigerated compartment and pulled out the preserved body of the real Andrew Reynolds.

He had to give it to him – Cross had indeed covered things quite thoroughly on his own men. He'd had everything arranged as soon as he'd spoken with Alex – the places had been switched last night and the private assassinated this morning, carrying the exact same wound he'd given Mercer.

Now things were nearly wrapped up – he just had to replace himself with this real double, and he was free to leave – hell, he didn't even need to change his disguise, although he might for the sake of being thorough. Another Blackwatch soldier traversing the building was nothing unusual, even when the base was in a tizzy.

Alex carefully shut the compartment and carried the cadaver over to the empty table. He arranged the body, scowling with distaste. It was all so much dead meat – no spark of life left in the flesh, nothing for the virus to latch onto and make its own. It wasn't that he wanted to consume it – that would have caused problems – but handling this lifeless shell filled him with disgust.

Finished, he stepped back, shifting his uniform slightly so that he wasn't a carbon copy of the deceased officer. There was no point in lingering – really, he had to get out of here before the forensics team arrived, and he had no idea when to expect them. Keeping light on his feet, he located the exit and cautiously left the room.

Carefully closing the door behind him, Alex took a moment to go over the situation in his head. Okay, so Samson was dead – honestly, it had just felt like killing another jingoistic moron, just with more preparations and ceremony. Hopefully it'd produce results. His job was done, and he was in a Blackwatch base. It wasn't somewhere he'd found himself in a while – infiltration had, over time, become extremely cumbersome as the standard layout for their perimeters had grown covered in viral detectors, and it was really just easier to hijack a tank, drive up to a base, and let the fun unfold from there. Unfortunately, he was not allowed to kill everyone there and level it with some hellfire missiles for good luck, which made it a sizeable change from every other time he'd found himself in military headquarters.

So… he wanted out. Security was probably high and alert in the wake of what had just happened, but not in the ways that he couldn't get around. Obviously, the entire fiasco had to be sorted out, and Cross wasn't leaving the HQ anytime soon. Mercer had to find his own way out. The captain had not provided blueprints – understandable, it wasn't like Cross wanted him to know the base inside and out – but his pieced-together memories of the interior were sketchy, and he couldn't just seek out a soldier and get the schematics like he usually did. The Wiseman captain had been adamant about that – this was really not the time for unexplained disappearances.

Not that Cross had been entirely unhelpful. He'd sabotaged the system – the viral detectors were all reporting normal concentrations of trace particles. Mercer would have to figure out how to hack into them like that sometime – he only knew how to break a few vital circuits, leaving the detectors reporting straight zeroes, and it tended to quickly become obvious to the nearby soldiers that they'd been deactivating. It would be so much more convenient if he could feed them a convincing loop.

As for the morgue camera? Some staff member was going to be very pissed off at the security loophole when they found that the surveillance had been down since that morning. Under his mask, Alex grinned. It was a good thing nobody had taken advantage of the lapse and moved the dead soldier's body, wasn't it?

He glanced around. He was in the middle of a pretty generic-looking hallway, all whites and greys with cold lighting and a sterile smell. _So… left or right?_ Mercer could faintly hear strains of a heated conversation far down the right side, so he chose to head in the other direction.

There was no point cross-referencing the layout with his memories of other bases – from his brief view outside, he could tell that this place was far larger than usual, and if it was serving as acting headquarters in the field, it probably held a lot more stations and areas to it anyways.

He just really hoped that nobody asked him where he was reporting to, or he'd have to break his 'no snacking' vow to Cross. Better to have a missing officer than a raised alarm. He preferred a dead Blackwatch mook to a live one anyway.

He grimaced as he reached a crossroads. Two more corridors branched off from his sides, and the one he was taking still stretched out a decent ways ahead. The hell, it looked like there was even an elevator lobby a dozen or so meters down one of them! Just how massive _was_ this place? And where the hell was an exit? He frowned – Cross hadn't deactivated all the cameras, and the same officer wandering in circles was going to look very suspicious. If he took too long, he was going to have to switch disguises somewhere for the sake of keeping things plausible, and of course, he'd have to find a blind spot to pull that off. Even then, having one officer walk into a shady corner and another one come out was only a step above just transforming in the middle of the hall. He stifled a groan. Alex really hated this hardcore stealth work – normally, when he played under the radar, things ended up in a fireworks display anyways, and he didn't care about being found in _retrospect_, only in present time. And _god_, he hated walking – it felt like such a waste of time when he had far more efficient ways of travelling at the same effort. He hated being stuck indoors, and being lost, and Blackwatch and sterilized air and hiding and_ really_, if his mood could get any more frustrated, he swore a little thundercloud was going to manifest itself over his head. It was only the thought of Dana that kept him from saying 'to hell with it' and carving his own bloody swathe outside. Possibly arranging some dead bodies outside to leave a message to Cross, telling him to do something anatomically unlikely with himself.

Actually, that one might be worth doing sometime. But for now, he had to get out of this damned place before he lost it entirely. He frowned, trying to discern the distant ends of the corridors.

It was then that he heard the Voice.

Power. Meaning. A perfectly fitted key turning in a lock – a series of impressions flashed through his mind at the crest of this new, massive wave, trying in vain to define the spread and scope of it. He reeled at the contact. It wasn't like the other voices in his head, the ones that hissed and cursed and whispered in the dark when there were no other white-noise distractions to blot them out; those, he knew well, as well as he knew himself. This struck a deeper chord, like a child recognizing their mother. Something warm and close and instinctive and _right_.

_Follow me,_ it said, and what he heard next did not need words to be conveyed – it was a sense, an intent. Pure and undiluted understanding. Taking the south hall was only a part of it; it was an entire path, an instant transfer, and nothing other than following it seemed to carry any gravity. His legs were moving before he consciously made the decision to walk, swiftly carrying him in this new direction.

_Yes_, Alex thought dimly. _Okay_. It felt nice to listen to that Voice – all of the _other_ voices in his head were drowned out by its soothing lull, and he found himself perfectly content to obey.

Something in the back of his mind was snarling caution and distrust; he frowned, and his step faltered momentarily. But before he could consciously acknowledge it, the other presence swept it away with a feathery touch, and it vanished in wavering ripples of confusion. _What…_ no. He began to walk again, faster this time. He had a job to do. Something important.

He swiftly turned into the elevator lobby, jabbing at the up button. Without delay, one of the pairs of doors slid open, and he slipped in, letting the Voice pick his destination for him out of the wide array of floors. Some key marked R5… _R for research_, whispered the memories of a reviled past life, unheard in his foggy contentment. He held still as the floor lurched and began to lift.

Normally, Mercer hated elevators. There was some rather heavy mental baggage associated with them – a moment so charged with fear and entrapment and responsive killing intent that he'd nearly lost himself at the outset, all original plans having been at the cusp of torn up in a blaze of instinct. Even defying that, there'd been no happy ending; merely severed ties, crushed hopes, and the quiet closure of one's first betrayal.

As it was, those charged memories didn't occur to him at all. He couldn't think of them, couldn't think of anything else than basic sensory information and a single-minded determination to do what he was instructed.

He arrived on another floor, this one a close copy of the first, save for white walls and a dull tiled floor. This lobby was slightly cushier than the cold military efficiency of the first – it had a waiting bench and a wide window that revealed bits of the jagged city skyline. There was even a quaint little potted plant on the sill, its wilting fronds drooping like nobody had bothered to water it in at least a week. Alex noticed none of these details as he strode through and into the midst of another network of halls.

_This way now_, the Voice whispered, and Mercer dutifully changed his direction in accordance to the mental tug. It seemed louder now, stronger. That was fine. It was _nice_ to sit back and let something else do the thinking, and the simple act of obedience was blissfully gratifying enough to be its own reward.

The facility passed by in a blur, every image forgotten as soon as it was processed. He wasn't sure if he encountered any soldiers or scientists – they were irrelevant. At this point, they could have demanded for him to fall in line with a revolver pressed to his head, and he would have brushed past them without acknowledging.

_Prepare yourself._

Without thinking - perhaps entirely outside of his volitiion - Alex's arms shifted into cruel claws, evil-looking implements made for the express purpose of a fast kill. Alongside this, he cast his soldier's skin aside - why was he disguised? There was no need to hide.

A corner's turn revealed a line; eight figures in Blackwatch raiment. Guns were cocked alongside muffled exclamations and harsh calls - he was too far gone to make out the words.

_Kill them._

He butchered them all dispassionately like the tool of war that he was, tearing through them as though they were mere dreams to cast aside. Their screams were silenced quickly, even as sirens began to wail from elsewhere. They meant nothing. The Voice willed them to die, and just as strongly wanted him to continue forward.

At long last, whatever was guiding his legs brought him to a standstill before a rather impressive-looking door.

Completely lacking any sort of handle or touchpad, it was obviously sealed; undeterred, Alex prepared to force his way to his destination by kicking it down. The Voice held him back, dragging his awareness to a raised panel by the wall. A series of keys bore the numbers zero through nine, with one red button and one green button. He stared dully at it, uncomprehending.

_Press eight-three-seven-zero-zero-four-two-five-one-five-nine-three-zero-six-four-green._

He did. Nothing seemed to happen, other than a muffled whir that emitted from somewhere within the locked room.

_Now seven-six-two-green._

At this, the door slid to the side.

Immediately, the fog cleared like scattering shadows before New York City's rising sun; that damnable happy stupor he'd been too unguarded to resist. And malevolent clarity, appalled realization - _everything_ chose that moment to strike Alex Mercer with the vengeance of a lightning bolt.

The room before him was dark save for warning lights, which strobed red beams across the room. Even as he squinted, thick, fleshy tendrils wound themselves over them, smothering the glass and blocking the carmine rays. They snaked across the ground, oozing over the black tile in horrible familiarity. The failing lights left countless complex machines and valves almost invisible in the shadows, but Mercer couldn't have possibly been less interested in them and whatever vile purpose they served. He could practically feel the danger, the power – nearly crippling waves of instinctive unease warred with his feet, trying to pull him back, _away!_ But it was impossible to move. His eyes were locked on the center of the room, on the dim shine on the reinforced glass of a walled containment cell, something that brought back gut-churning memories – _his own _– of his most terrible mistake…

But this time, the doorway was already open. The protective panel had slid up, fitting neatly back in the glass ceiling.

And under this stood a boy of four or five; a child with pale brown curls and a beatific smile. A child in a full-body lab suit, a child with one splayed hand on the ground, from which stemmed a web of pulsing, writhing tendrils of infection.

"Hello, Zeus."

A deep snarl reverberated in Alex's throat.

"Pariah…"


	5. Fight and Flight

Alex Mercer snarled.

Everything in him was screaming to run; in fact, the only thing he wasn't sure of on that line of action was whether to run _forward_ or _away._ Somehow, those two equally strong desires cancelled each other out, leaving him indecisively motionless. It was kill or be killed; what stood before him looked little different from an ordinary human child, but Alex didn't need the memories of Blackwatch and Gentek's specialized personnel to tell him just how dangerous Pariah was. He could _sense _it – a measure of power and control, something that got his hackles up like he'd never felt before. Not when he'd been dying of Blackwatch's cancer parasite, not when he'd watched Greene choke up a twisted monster to destroy him, not when he'd watched a terrifying, revolting abomination of pulsing flesh break through the pavement and rise in the center of Times Square to spew death into the air. Not even when he'd felt the all-devouring heat of a nuclear explosion closing in on his body, before everything had gone white for a time. No, never like _this_.

Was this what it was like to fear?

0o0o0

In the conference room several stories below, the warning klaxons began to wail.

Cross swore for real this time and went for his gun.

0o0o0

In stark contrast, Pariah seemed completely unaffected, despite being mere meters away from what was quite possibly the most dangerous being to ever exist. He had straightened up from his crouching position – the tendrils on the floor were still spreading, independent of his touch – and was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, eyeing Mercer as if he were a particularly interesting curio.

He cocked his head, and the smile became more of a grin.

"Well, well," he spoke. His voice was high and clear, no different from a normal child aside from his impeccable enunciation; such a far cry from the desiccated, distorted rasp of his mother's. "DX-1118 C returns. I'd welcome you to my home, but as you can see, there really isn't much hospitality to be had here."

_Run or kill, run or kill _– the hell, why was he even thinking of running? Since when had that become a response? But he couldn't deny that was the prime signal his treacherous body wanted to obey.

"I've been waiting a long time to meet you. Even before they moved me, I could feel you. So strange, so alien, so distant. Apart from our family. I had to ask myself why – why you stood alone since your birth, why you spurned our welcoming arms. Why you chose to suffer outside of our embrace." The child frowned. "Misguided, clearly. But all delusions can be stripped away soon enough."

And _god,_ Alex could _feel _it – that treacherous sentiment flowering in the back of his mind like a poisonous vine as Pariah touched upon his instincts through their unsought mental link – his _other_ instincts, the ones that writhed and churned within him at his darkest times, the ones he fought tentacle and claw to repress and keep buried within the darkest recesses of his being. Those things he had struggled and suffered to distance from himself – _as if you could run away from what you are_, whispered that damnable voice – were stirring. Hunger – the need to rampage and devour and _consume_ in an endless cycle of forcible evolution and self-strengthening. Loneliness – he was cut off from the presence of his own kind, with no children to call his own – the virus within him craved to rectify this and spread. He wanted to stop hiding, to stop denying what he _was_ and to alter the world to suit his needs instead of altering himself to suit the world.

And those dark things bowed under a single unified sentiment – the Hive. It was Family. It was _right_.

The notion was _so familiar_ – and _so_ sickening because of it, when he realized that perhaps it was something he'd always felt. Pariah wasn't bringing in an entirely new and alien concept with his hive link, the endless clamor of voices just barely audible over their de facto leader – he was simply calling to light something that had always existed. Something that had always been – and always would be – a part of him, something he could ignore and fight but never really will away entirely. But he hadn't acknowledged it then, and he refused to give into it now, because he had something stronger to pull him back.

He ground his teeth. He already _had_ a family.

The child began to pace in a small circle, pausing once to kick absently at the floor. "I admit, you perhaps did not have the best first impression of your true family. My mother was somewhat… territorial? Confrontational? No matter. She tried to show you what we were, what we could be. You did not understand the gesture, and hostility bloomed where acceptance should have."

Reeling from shock, dark sentiments, and shaking off hypnotic stupor, Mercer's thoughts slid into place with mechanic efficiency, organizing every piece of relevant information it had on the entity that stood before him. It wasn't overly complex, in the end. He had to act fast, while he could still remember why he _needed_ to act. Pariah was dangerous. Pariah was loose. Pariah could control him. Pariah needed to die.

With a roar, he flung himself forward, one claw raised and elongated for a deadly strike while the other held his balance at his side.

No sooner had the tips of his shoes left the floor when he was slammed with the full force of Pariah's intent.

_Stop._

It was like mentally getting hit by the blast of a thermobaric tank. In that moment, there was _nothing_, only opposing force that struck him with so much power that white light exploded behind his eyes. Alex reeled, momentarily stunned, and his preemptive strike failed as he crashed to the floor halfway through his leap, claws jerking spastically.

Pariah merely smiled.

"Ah-ah-ah. So violent! Dear me, is that how you greet everyone?"

Alex glared, face contorted into a snarl, but he was having difficulty even lifting his head. Fighting was nearly impossible – it was like he'd been reduced to watching in consternation. But _no_, he wouldn't give up. Not to the Infection. At the very least, something had changed – those crazed, hideous facets of himself had subsided back to their usual potency, although they still seemed awakened, a shade closer to his rational mind than he was comfortable with.

"Let's try that again and behave, shall we?"

There was a lull, a slackening of whatever invisible leash the twisted child had attached to him, but as quickly as the _notion_ of a second attack occurred, Alex was forced back to the ground, harder than before – before he'd even managed to stand up.

He could feel Pariah tugging at his mind, trying to lull him into passivity as he had done before, but he was ready; he gritted his teeth and clenched his claws and fought against it, remembering, hating, letting his anger bolster his will. He felt something break, something shift, infinitesimally – he grasped that and took advantage, pulling his knees under him and pushing himself up to his feet, albeit on all fours.

"We can still be as one," the child sighed. "I'd just hoped that I might be able to show you rather than _force_ you to see. No matter. There can be time for reconciliation later."

Thick tentacles erupted from the ground, lunging and ensnaring the struggling Mercer in a chokehold. Others pinned down his limbs and torso with crushing strength. Immediately, he began to lash away at them – Pariah may not have lessened his mental grip, but fighting bondage was such a natural and powerful reaction that Alex found himself able to commit to it with less resistance than he expected.

Still, the compulsion to simply give up and lie still was overpowering. But submission was one thing Mercer had never been partial to, and he writhed furiously, shifting rows of tiny, serrated spines along his limbs to rip away at his bonds. To his dismay, he wasn't making much headway – the tentacles were far more durable than he'd expected or previously encountered. They felt more like the growths on one of Greene's armored Hives than anything else.

Pariah merely observed him, hands clasped over his chest like an exasperated teacher with a disobedient student.

"Well, if you won't be reasoned with…" He paused and cocked his head. "Oh dear. I do believe the guards are coming. Talk to me for them, will you?"

Alex could hear them too, the rapid tromp of armored boots. He struggled harder, thrashing violently against the tentacles, but with his arms pinned, progress was much too slow; he couldn't start breaking them until he'd carved out some wiggle room. He could only watch with growing desperation as the child crossed over to the wall and placed a small palm on it.

Pariah turned back to face him, that same innocent smile stretching his face. "We'll meet again Zeus. I'm sure of it."

Little threads of infected mass wormed through the reinforced concrete - just like his mother had done; god, he was _swimming_ in nauseous deja vu – and pulsed as one, shattering the wall and creating a hole just small enough for Pariah to slip through. With a quirky little wave, he slipped out of sight; whether he clung to the outside surface or let himself fall, he couldn't tell. Still disturbingly synchronized, the parted tendrils lunged back and regrew themselves over the hole in a twisted lattice.

Alex swore.

The bonds around him didn't shift, and he was still clawing away at them frantically half a minute later, when a contingent of Blackwatch soldiers burst in through the doorway.

He couldn't get a good view, strapped to the floor as he was, but his accumulated stolen memories were acquainted with arms enough to tell the difference between cocking an assault rifle, a machine gun, a grenade launcher, a javelin, a semiautomatic, and about five other classifications of military-grade weaponry. And he heard all of them.

Being trapped and helpless in before Blackwatch lent him a surge of frenzied strength. Like a caged animal, he lashed out once more, and the fleshy cords that bound his torso and shoulders finally snapped under the bladed stroke. Teeth bared, he flipped over, bisected the ones around his legs, and sprang up.

It was only when he snapped back up to his feet that he recognized the man that stood at the head of the soldiers. It prompted him to spit out another string of obscenities.

Alex had only seen Cross look at him like that once before, inside that Hive – in that ambush he'd been naïve and trusting enough to dutifully stroll into. But no, even that didn't equate. The veteran had viewed him as a target then, prey to hunted down and brought back. It was detached – 'nothing personal', he might have said. Now… the sheer anger in the man's green eyes was anything but detached.

A low growl slid from his throat as he shifted back into a defensive position, shoulders tense and biomass coiled.

He only recognized that the room was dead silent until that quietude was interrupted by the reverberating hum when Cross powered up his damnable shock baton.

He lifted his arm, claws extended… fuck! No, this was Cross! He froze, hand still drawn back for the first strike. His instincts were stridently screaming to cut the hesitation and get on with it, but something equally powerful was holding him back – something he wasn't sure he'd ever had cause to feel before.

Cross wasn't putting on an act this time, Mercer could tell. There was no mistaking the cold fury in his eyes. Why would he be pulling a farce, when it looked like he'd betrayed the veteran and freed the greatest threat to security that Blackwatch could ever dream of? _Fuck_… no, it really did not look good for him, and even if Cross wasn't surrounded by men that had no idea of his prior dealings with the virus, Alex doubted he was in the mood to talk things over.

It didn't matter. He couldn't roll over and let Blackwatch have their way with him. Better Cross to die than him; what did the other man's survival mean to him, anyways? He was Blackwatch, the enemy. It shouldn't have been more complex than that.

But… Cross had been the enemy then, and he looked to be the enemy now. But in between… he'd been the only one wise enough to look past his preconceptions and realize that Zeus was not the harbinger of the biological apocalypse like they'd all been told. He'd _worked_ with him, saving New York City from being glassed, helping keep the Mercers off Blackwatch's radar. He honestly wanted reform. And over a few months, Mercer realized he'd come to consider Cross… an ally? A rival? Perhaps even a friend, in the loosest, most twisted sense of the word. Whatever it was, it was enough to make him halt where he once would have charged forth without thinking. No matter how he tried to justify it, he just didn't want to kill Captain Cross.

His eyes flickered from side to side, searching for another option. The only way out was heavily guarded. But now that Pariah was gone, he found himself able to control his motion freely again – it wouldn't be too difficult to avoid Cross and tear through the rest of the mooks, and then run from there. The base might have been brimming with defenses, but it wouldn't have been the first place he'd ripped apart. Hell, if he took out Blackwatch's acting base of operations, he'd be dealing them a crippling blow… if he could afford to right now.

But there were others in the crowd, a hint of a scent lingering on their Kevlar vests. The transport helicopter, Cross - even a trace of his own clung to their uniforms. Cross's men, the Wisemen that he'd brought along. Most of them were centered around their leader, but others were dispersed in those lines of dozens of tense soldiers, all waiting for him to make a move.

He _really_ doubted that the veteran would be willing to hear him out later if he slew any of his underlings. Cross looked after his team as if they were his children – and while Alex would never admit it, it was one of the things that made him such a good leader.

He couldn't just stand here and plot out routes of escape; he only had a few more moments at best until they started shooting, and besides, he could hardly pinpoint where the Wisemen were. There were no visual cues to separate them from the rest of the spec-ops retards. Unless he could get past all of the soldiers with no fatalities, which was damn well impossible, he might end up destroying his last chance at reconciliation. But if he_ didn't _kill everyone, there'd be heavy pursuit.

Every instinct screamed for an attack. Behind him, the discolored growths over Pariah's escape rustled sickeningly.

Oh, it would have been _so_ much more convenient to simply kill everyone.

_I am definitely going to regret this later._

He snarled and clenched his fist, shifting his exposed skin and clothing into chitinous black plates. Not a moment later, a barked command signaled open fire.

It was like a switch had been flipped; he burst into motion as the onslaught started, tanking bullets and swerving around the heavier munitions. The situation was hardly one he liked, but he couldn't deny that Blackwatch, for once, probably had a justified reason to be shooting at him. For all they were aware of, he'd somehow infiltrated the building and freed Pariah on a mad whim. Hell, if he was in their position, he'd be attacking him too. It took mere moments for Pariah's sophisticated containment room to be turned to so much broken glass and metal - the first shots missed Mercer by a wide margin, incorrectly assuming he was headed towards them, but when the soldiers realized he was heading for the _back_ of the room, they adjusted their aim accordingly, and things quite literally got much hotter.

The web of tentacles on the ground exploded as a series of grenades incinerated the floor around Alex's feet. He dodged, leaping from side to side – evasion was difficult in his armor, but it also lessened the heat and impact of whatever he didn't entirely manage to escape.

Even with all of that, he still felt woefully unprotected in the face of so much assault. He'd been in some pretty tight quarters before, but this – it was like Blackwatch was trying to erase the entire room with brute physical force. And he preferred when the option of fighting _back _and forcibly stopping their weapons was a viable one.

A final dive away from a missile and he was at his destination – the room's back end, where Pariah had made his own exit. It was time to copy that maneuver.

He dug his claws into the wall – or struggled to; how strong _was_ this stuff? Finally finding purchase as the hail of bullets cascaded around him, ricocheting off his armor, he clenched his talons and _pulled_, trying to reopen Pariah's escape route. They clung resolutely, but they couldn't hold out against a creature that would happily play catch with a tank. Once the tendrils had shifted, the reinforced concrete came away with relative ease. With a roar of exertion, he tore a hole through the laboratory wall; cool high-altitude winds rushed in from the city outside, and without a second's hesitation, he hurled himself into the sky.

He couldn't glide in his armor; it was too dense and heavy to be aerodynamic. Gliding was too slow anyways – he'd just be a target for the Blackwatch soldiers until he dropped out of their reach. So he did the dropping now, pulling his knees up and rocketing towards the ground in a parody of a cannonball. The air rushed around the curved faces of his armor, whistling shrilly.

It was only once he started falling when he realized just how high up the laboratory-cross-detention-cell had been – or the building, for that matter.

His reunion with the ground was spectacular; his brief meeting with the ground left a lasting impression. Massive cracks unfurled in the asphalt at speeds too quickly for even him to track – not that he was watching. But New York City's construction teams were the ones suffering for it, not him. His thick, protective chitin dampened the shock and absorbed the impact.

He pushed himself upright and dispelled his heavy armor, knowing he'd need all the speed he could muster. He'd only delayed a minute or so, but there was no doubt in his mind that Pariah was already long-gone. It had him torn – he couldn't let Pariah loose upon the city. That was out of the question. He'd lived through the hell his mother had caused, and from what Blackwatch's top scientists believed, she was strictly small-scale in comparison to her son. At the same time… Pariah had used him. Controlled him. He'd wrested his body out of his jurisdiction with ease, and even when he'd been prepared for the onslaught, he'd still struggled… Alex didn't know how long he could hold out. The child's voice was immeasurably stronger than the combined gestalt of the hivemind, every breath rallying him to _obey_. If he tried to pursue Pariah… hell, he'd been rendered useless at the facility. The kid had been _playing _with him. Unless he'd been using the full extent of whatever power he possessed, it was likely that he could end up losing. All of his power at the whims of Redlight, just another tool in Pariah's bag of tricks.

But if he just let him go…

A low groan escaped his throat. What had he _done_?

There was a time for rumination and reflection; quiet nights in the apartment, or twilight, perched upon a towering giant that cast its shadows upon the sea. Then, he could mete out his own culpability in the recent past's many travesties and wonder grimly at whatever the future might hold. Those times, however, did not include 'standing around outside of one of Blackwatch's most important outposts while everyone was looking for him'.

Especially since while the grounded viral detector system was down, the UAVs were _not_. Alarms shrilled, turrets swiveled in their perches, and asphalt crunched under the treads of two approaching tanks.

He almost formed his armor again, but he'd be trading speed for durability. And he really didn't want to linger.

Instead, he channeled biomass to his left arm, forming a thick, spiky shield. Wasting no time, Mercer sprang into motion as the first streams of bullets began to hail down. They weren't very threatening, but it was better to avoid them while he was relatively squishy on the outside. There were six of them arranged in a vaguely rectangular perimeter – a setup that would effectively render most enemies just so much paste. He hurled himself at the nearest one, holding his shield before him; the rapid fire ricocheted wildly off the makeshift bulwark, failing to penetrate. From experience, he knew the posts upon which the sentry guns sat were a blind spot; they were programmed to avoid firing upon each other. Using that momentary respite, he leapt up onto the platform and wrenched the turret from its stand.

From here, he could see better – it looked like he was on the edge of the complex, but the adjacent road was heavily patrolled. The tanks he'd heard earlier were crawling up the street; one noticed him and began to fire. He pulled up his shield; the bullets slammed against it as little more than an annoyance, but he knew it wouldn't hold up against incendiary weaponry for long.

Alex gave the tank a turret. It thanked him for the thoughtful high-velocity gift by exploding magnificently.

But now he was out of makeshift projectiles, the other tank's gun was swerving to face him, and a series of helicopters were descending from over the base. A few meters below him, soldiers were beginning to pour in – none of them Marines, he noticed. Normally, he would have called open season on Blackwatch, but he really needed to leave.

He crouched and sprang, scything through the air in the midst of a cascade of rounds. His hand – the one that was still a hand – grasped onto the wall of an abandoned convenience store and twisted, pulling his entire body behind him into the right angle. There was a moment of cracking wood and broken movement before he redirected his velocity upwards, scaling the building with as much ease as he might run across the street. His eyes were narrowed, focusing on his course of action with single-minded determination.

Dana. Dana would know what to do. She always did.

And he had to warn her. If… if he failed, if he didn't act soon, it was clear to him that New York City would be facing another Outbreak, the scope of which he couldn't even begin to gauge. She had to get out – he wouldn't risk her safety again, not for anything. The image of the Leader Hunter in her friend's now-ruined apartment was engraved white-hot in his mind. _Never again_.

The tank only got to fire off a lone rocket before he was out of its sights, beyond where it could follow. That was one of the things he'd learned early on – tanks were big, with pretty colossal firepower, but their lack of mobility was crippling. All he had to do was gain some height or duck into one of the ever-present messes if alleyways, and they couldn't touch him. He preferred helicopters, even if they were exponentially more breakable and didn't pack as much ordnance. Well, he preferred them when they weren't doggedly chasing him, like they were now.

Dashing across rooftops like a parkour expert on steroids, hotly pursued by a strike team, was a rather familiar situation for the viral monster. It was all about speed, he knew - hell, he had his own set of impromptu rules for aerial chases. They were all simple laws set by trial and error, the sort of strategic, action-based rules that were ever so much easier to remember than etiquette or conduct. Never stop moving, zigzag erratically, and Blackwatch was almost guaranteed not to hit you. Change height whenever possible. Don't waste time on vertical movement – running up buildings made you an easy target. Use the smoke from their missiles as brief cover – that was when you swapped directions or tried to come to ground. Don't go down to street level in an open area, or when you hadn't gained enough distance from the helis. Never put on a disguise when you're still on the roof. And of course, once you're grounded and in somebody else's skin, pretend you have no idea what's going on and _run away_ with all of the rest of the panicking civvies rather than just standing there. _That _one had taken him a while to get.

Really, he could have been enjoying himself if he didn't have such a colossal mistake pressing down on his mind. This was almost like a sport, a test of power and skill and cunning that had a fair illusion of danger to it – he knew he had nothing to fear from the gunships' limited artillery, but if he missed a step or did something predictable, the pain of an exploding hellfire was penalty enough. Sometimes, he'd even draw out these chases and skip over the first or second possible disengagement spot, just for enjoyment, and that all-too-rare chance to test himself – but this was not one of those times. This was all intent and frustration and anger and _trying to get away_ from his damn pursuit already, and it reminded him oddly of those first few weeks of his life, when watching Blackwatch call in the cavalry was not only a nuisance, but a true source of fear.

A helicopter banked low, firing off a quartet of rockets; they exploded in quick sequence behind him. The scaffolding he was in the process of spring-boarding off of faltered and fell as Alex jumped, ruining his propulsion and only sending him half as high above the street as he'd intended. He was forced to change direction in midair and go for a lower boutique next to the hotel he'd been aiming for – a hotel that was too high for the chopper's path and would have forced it to pull back.

Instead, the roof he landed on was low and highly accessible to the bolder pilot; his three allies were following at a much safer elevation, both for themselves and their quarry. Alex could appreciate the one's daring on a better day, but certainly not now.

"Shit!" he swore, as a shell exploded mere feet away, nearly knocking him off his feet. He swerved, switching directions and pushing himself forward with all the speed he could muster, only just managing to keep ahead of gunship's line of fire.

It dimly occurred to him that the rooftops underfoot were unfamiliar to him, and it took another handful of scattered, frantic moments before he remembered that he was in Brooklyn. He grimaced. Getting in and out of Manhattan was never fun.

A series of varying-height buildings slowed his progress down dangerously, even if it finally forced the one gunship to back off; a cursory glance up told him the helicopters overhead were gaining. On a snap decision, he shifted his arm into a clawed whip and cast away his shield. He'd need a free hand.

He pulled his pseudo-arm back like a pitcher preparing to throw a fastball, then flung the dark appendage to its full length; ropy tendrils stretched and extended over a dozen yards into the air before their barbed tips finally met and reflexively plunged into metal.

What came next always felt more like a carnival ride than it had any right to – retracting the tentacle's length and flying through the air at maddening velocity, while the panicked pilot and copilot realized their impending unwelcome guest and began to buck the helicopter in all sorts of crazy – and futile – maneuvers. Again, though, Mercer found the situation too serious to glean any sort of enjoyment from it as the gunship spun in circles that would have made a tail-chasing terrier proud. He yanked his gripping claws out of its tail and re-anchored himself onto its door.

As he tossed the two screaming occupants aside like candy wrappers, Alex Mercer almost felt a twinge of guilt. Almost. Sometimes, he found it hard to meet their eyes… but what was the point? He needed the helicopter, and they wouldn't have survived anyways if he just shoved them behind him – with the missing door, they'd probably be truncated by the wind pressure, and almost all of his hijacked copters ended up getting incinerated by the military. And besides, the strike team pilots were always Blackwatch. They deserved whatever they got.

Those terrified screams…

All right, so falling to death was one of the crueler and more prolonged types he dealt out, but death was death, and just because something involved a few more seconds of agony than usual didn't make something else entirely. Blackwatch were monsters. They might have screamed and pled and died human, but that didn't change the cold-blooded efficiency as they tried to kidnap his sister from her apartment for questioning, their twisted propaganda, the occasional peal of unhinged laughter at the bordering bridges as they gunned down anyone foolish enough to try and cross out of the city, Infected or not. They weren't human _then_. Hell, the first experience in his _life_ was one of pain, confusion, and stark terror as Blackwatch chased him down for reasons then-unbeknownst to him. He was simply meting out the same amount of mercy they showed everyone else.

It wasn't a common feeling for him. In fact, when it did strike him, it truly felt _strange_, like some artificial sentiment that didn't belong inside whatever clandestine ether served as his brain. But sometimes, when he was at Dana's apartment, listening to the New York traffic at night and watching her always working away at her computer, he thought of the ongoing war between him and Blackwatch and felt somehow… _tired_. Not angry or restless or vengeful or itching to go out and get his many bladed appendages dirty again. Just tired.

And maybe just a little human.

He grimaced as he eased himself into the now-vacant control seat. He couldn't afford to be human.

The alarms whined as he pushed the vehicle to its top speeds, warnings flashing on the dashboard as a series of needles and gauges flicked into their respective red zones. Alex wasn't nearly as concerned about engine failure as the many pilots he'd consumed had been, for rather self-specific reasons.

The gunship rocketed forward, faster than his flight across the rooftops if only because he didn't have to stop and jump. His seat shuddered as a few rounds dented the vehicle's side; he banked left and up, trying to get a better view of the terrain. Being on an island, if you ran in a straight line through New York City, you'd eventually reach water, one way or another. A cursory glance down told him he was very near that point, and a squint ahead saw a very familiar array of smokestacks in the distance, over the bay. _How convenient_. Lucky that he'd already been heading north.

And not really lucky that where Brooklyn and Manhattan came closest to meeting was where Blackwatch had set up their main presence on the island. Thankfully, he seemed to be on a path toward the east side of Manhattan's southern tip, rather than the west, where his official Least Favorite Spot in the City resided.

Of course, then there was the no-fly zone. Cross's transport had been cleared. Mercer's escaping joyride had _not_.

The gunship trembled again, harsher this time, as a series of shots clipped the propellers. He swore as it lurched and dropped a few feet before he was able to steady it – he needed to keep this thing in the sky for as long as possible.

No sooner had the urban sprawl beneath him given way to grey waves that rippled and frothed dully under the overcast sky when a mechanically detached woman's voice echoed tonelessly from the dashboard.

"Warning. Entering quarantined zone. No permission granted; please turn around. If you do not comply…"

Mercer placed a palm over the GPS unit and dug his fingers in, casually crushing it.

"Yeah, no, sorry," he replied to nobody in particular, flooring the controls. "I've got business there."

Immediately, the quarantine patrol was on his tail, joining the other gunships in chasing after his smoking, damaged chopper like hounds after a rabbit.

Unfortunately for them, Alex Mercer made a _terrible _rabbit.

In his cockpit, he smirked mirthlessly as one of the gunships fired off a hellfire rocket. He'd been counting on it. Instead of slamming the controls like he normally would, he pulled around in a swift high-G turn.

Mercer always managed to get a thrill out of that moment of bone-jarring impact, no matter how inconvenient it was. But this time, it wasn't inconvenient at all.

He hurled himself up in a mighty leap as the metal beneath him crumpled under extreme force and heat. The shockwave of hot air and smoke thrust him higher, raising his jump and launching him even further forward. He angled himself horizontally for a glide. By positioning himself _just so_, he managed to ride the blast and use it as extra propulsion, even as the burning carcass of his vehicle tumbled into the water far below.

In the precious few seconds it took for his pursuit to realize that he'd gone in the opposite direction they'd expected, he was already well on his way across the river, arms outstretched in what his sister often considered 'playing wannabe Superman'. He augmented his glide with a stream of air, re-angling his body so that he was on track for Manhattan and not further into the surrounding bay.

A couple missiles flashed by him; he watched their trails fly ahead with something close to disinterest. Were he in any position to, he would have shrugged. Honestly, being hit by one of them at this point would have just been some useful support. As for the helicopters themselves, only the border patrol had clearance to cross, so he'd at least lost some of his pursuit.

His glide began to falter as his reserves of compressed air ran low and his weight finally seemed to register to gravity. For one blissful moment, he was finally able to forget about everything he'd just royally screwed up and savor the simple joy of adrenaline, soaring, and an entire physics book's worth of forces clamoring for dominion on his form in all directions.

And… oh, shit. He wasn't going to make it.

He hit the water like a stone, the strange, fiery pain it induced engulfing him almost instantly. With a strangled snarl, he thrust himself upwards and out of the bay, jetting out compressed air for propulsion while trying to reach gliding equilibrium again. But his arc was too low and his body weighed down by water, and he only managed to airdash forward once before hitting the sea again.

Twelve colossal leaps and an entire dictionary's worth of swearing later, he finally managed to reach a pier that jutted out into the bay. He emerged on the concrete Manhattan shoreline sopping wet and agitated, and he could already hear the whine of a still-pursuing gunship.

He growled. No, today had not been a good day at _all_.


	6. After the Fires Fade

Dana Mercer often found herself watching the door.

It was hard, sometimes. Well, being the sister of Alexander J. Mercer had never been easy, but these days, it was a difficulty of a different sort. Back then, every thought of her brother had been a shadow upon her mind, a distant hope turned rancid by neglect that maybe, just _maybe_, she cropped up in his thoughts as he did hers; that somewhere among his single-minded devotion to his work and his cold-blooded demeanor, he'd cared for her, just a little.

Ever since… well, _something_ had happened, but Alex was scarce with the details and everything official had vanished in a massive cover up. Ever since that last night in her old apartment that had climaxed in breaking and entry and blood, and ended up in the dark mouth of an unused subway tunnel as searchlights strobed the city above, such dark musings about her brother had immediately vanished without the slightest doubt. It was ironic that anything _good_ had come from such a terrible night. But now there were other things – things she wished she knew, and at the same time found herself afraid to imagine. Whenever he wasn't within her line of sight, he was off running around the city, always fighting, tangled up in a three-way war on a side of his own. Always in danger. It didn't matter that she knew how strong he was, what terrifying feats he could commit when need be – _or_ that she knew that those impossible powers she was aware of were only a fragment of what he was capable of, slivers she'd gotten him to admit to or uncovered by hacking into military footage. He was still out there alone, taking on a zombie apocalypse and the United States military at the same time. Of course she worried about him – she didn't want to lose him again. Not when it felt like she had finally discovered her brother, actually _found _him, for the first time in her life. He was dark and awkward and tense and probably psychotic, but he _cared_.

For there lurked the worries she liked to dwell upon even less – that someday, amidst all the freakish and incomprehensible hell he went through regularly, he might recover his memory – not fragments of it, as he claimed would sometimes surface, but the entire thing – and become the Alex she'd used to know again. The one that looked upon his petri dishes with more affection than he did her. The one who, as desperately as she'd tried to interpret otherwise, had only recognized she_ existed_ whenever there was something he needed from her. If he was still Alex, then that existence had to be somewhere inside of him, and she didn't think she could bear it after seeing _anything else_ he could have been – what he was now. Still broken enough to be recognizably Alex, but… _alive_, where his former self had been as sterile and lifeless as the laboratories he occupied. And was she _wrong _for praying that, for preferring the new version, _her_ Alex to the old, when all she had to do was turn on the television to see what he did on a daily basis – the death tolls, the colossal damage? She wasn't stupid; she'd seen his volatile temper, his rage, the naked hunger in his eyes. She didn't think she'd recognize the person he became outside of her walls; he vacillated between being a vengeful, distant sentinel that discarded stony watchfulness for godlike speed when stirred, and being a whirlwind of betentacled death and destruction.

And each night, he returned to her quietly, as docile and agreeable as a golden retriever. As much as she tried to focus on her work, her eyes would always manage to drift away from the screen and find the door; that dark, painted wooden thing that swung open to reveal her big brother far too infrequently.

Now, though, was one of the rare times it caved in and complied, the world perhaps taking pity on her. She was in the process of turning away for the umpteenth time when the doorknob rustled, drawing her eyes back.

It was her brother, all right. It wasn't as if she really had too many visitors anyway, and his unwavering and admittedly peculiar fashion sense gave him away long before his features did. Dana wondered absentmindedly what his problem was with new clothes. She'd even gone shopping for him, but the variety of different outfits she'd picked up had merited only a polite but unenthusiastic thanks, and at the moment were neatly draped over his designated chair in the bedroom with the tags still attached.

"Hey, Alex," she called casually, by way of greeting. "Welcome back. I called the repairman; he'll be here tomorrow at one, and I expect you to be here and man up with an explanation for once –"

She stopped when she realized that her brother's usually dark countenance seemed notably moreso than usual. She knew that expression – he always managed to tie anger into it, but never enough to completely mask that tense shadow of guilt.

"Forget the repairman," he muttered ominously.

Her heart sank, alongside her stomach. She'd seen Alex ruminating before – she knew that he'd done a lot of things that called for regret, but she couldn't empathize with her brother's deeds, and at such times was left helpless to do anything more than watch Alex sequester himself inside his brooding shell. But given that he'd just come home from some sort of weird and probably risky mission, context dictated that something had gone wrong just _now_.

"Alex?" she asked again, suddenly wary. "What's wrong?"

He didn't answer straight away; his head down and eyes flashing, he stalked over to his couch, scrutinized it for a moment, and after some short and unfathomable deliberation, flopped down on it face-first with enough force to make the springs creak. Dana detached herself from the computer and followed her brother over, placing herself much more gingerly onto an armchair perpendicular to him.

"Alex, tell me what happened."

He groaned something unintelligible. Dana sniffed – with his entrance, the apartment smelled faintly of smoke and gunpowder. Granted, that was the scent he usually dragged in, but now it had her thinking. What had Alex gotten himself into?

"You know how I told you that nothing was going to go wrong?" his muffled voice came through a mouthful of fabric.

She eyed him warily. "Yeah?"

"Well," he sighed, rolling over to face her with a grim gaze; the couch groaned and sagged under his weight, "I was lying."

"You were kind of tempting fate with that one," she mentioned critically. "I mean, if you're going to say nothing's going to happen, then it's gonna go to Party City, buy a bunch of streamers and balloons, and then make a point of blowing up spectacularly in your face."

He scowled. More accurately, his preexistent and nearly omnipresent scowl deepened. "This isn't some kind of joke. It's serious."

"Yeah, I get that. You're practically shooting lasers out of your eyes. Hey, can you _do_ that?"

Alex was not appreciating her blatant attempts to lighten the mood. At all.

"Dana, something terrible is about to happen to Manhattan again. Things like what almost happened two months ago. I might be able to stop it, but things have probably already started, and –"

"Woah, hold up." She lifted her hands, fingers splayed. "What the hell are you talking about? Explain."

"Listen, do you remember when I asked you to look up Pariah?"

"And we plumbed Gentek's highly encrypted reserves for a day and a half without finding anything, before you finally spilled and told me what _you_ knew about him?" She frowned. "Greene's son, some sort of super-Infected thing?"

Then her eyes widened with comprehension. "Oh. _Oh_. Alex, you _didn't_."

"If you're afraid of me accidentally unleashing what's apparently the ultimate incarnation of Redlight on the city, then yes, I did."

Dana took a moment to bury her head in her hands. "…Fuck."

He nodded. That covered it pretty well.

At last, she looked up. "May I ask _why_ the fuck you set him loose?"

"I didn't mean to! He sort of – oh, hell, it's complicated." He balled one hand into a fist, trying to get his mind in order. It was pretty damn clear there was a war to fight and he was the only man for the job, but as much as he wanted to lose himself in the bloody fray again, he wasn't going to make the same mistakes he'd made before. The mistakes he'd made the last time there had been a true danger to his sister… he hadn't forgotten. No, that guilty hell was never going to leave his shoulders.

"Dana, you need to get out of Manhattan. I can… look, I'll find a way. I can get you past quarantine, somehow. But you need to go. If I fail… when shit goes down –"

"No." Her jaw was set.

"Dana, I just told you that there's a-"

"I said _no_, Alex. Listen, I know it's dangerous. You think I ran around in the streets last time going to nightclubs or something? I know how to stay out of trouble. And I'm not leaving you to do this alone. Not… not like last time."

Alex opened his mouth, and then closed it. Part of him was screaming at her stubbornness – that she needed to be safe for both of their sakes, that she was squishy and he wasn't, that it was his fault and not hers that she'd been incapacitated during her referenced 'last time'. He was a _target_ and she was only mortal, his Achilles' heel. But there was something else in him, something that needed guidance and someone to care and _Dana_ and might have even been a little selfish. He didn't _want_ her to leave. Hell, he didn't know what he'd _do_ if she was gone.

He'd have to think on this one later.

"So. Explain. What the hell happened back there?"

He succinctly recounted the events at the base, omitting small pieces of information that he felt she didn't really need to know – the morgue and the prearranged death, that dreamlike encounter where he'd gutted Blackwatch guards without a flicker of thought. She had no love for the special operations force, but talking of death made her look uncomfortable, and he unconditionally hated to see her upset. If she was happier without knowing and it wasn't terribly important, then he figured it was probably best not to share.

Glossed-over bits or not, he didn't get very far before she interrupted - only up to his actual face-to-face meeting with Pariah.

"He'd been controlling me through the hivemind. It was like… well, I could actually think when I realized what he was doing to me, but I still couldn't make myself move," he tried to explain. "Or it took so much effort that I was practically useless – too slow to act or react. I was getting better at fighting it, but then he pinned me down and-"

"Mind control…?" she mused, frowning at his mention of the hivemind. The way he said it... it was like he was actually a part of it. "You can't go after the kid if he has that much... _power_ over you, Alex. Not yet."

She couldn't deny, the thought of Alex under something else's control was terrifying. _He_ was terrifying, she knew - he just did his best to hide that side from her. But all of that pent-up anger and brute force, without any of the restraint...

"I know." He heaved a frustrated sigh. He'd half expected Dana to have some magical 'Well, all you have to do is _this_' at the wings, but he couldn't begrudge her for not knowing how a viral abomination should properly deal with another viral abomination's mindscrewing. "I have to stay here, I think. Cross is going to come looking for me, and this is going to be the first place he barges into. I don't want to leave you alone when he shows up."

"Cross?" Dana asked, voice sharp. She recalled the resilient and watchful old soldier she'd met earlier. "What does Cross have to do with any of this?"

"A lot. Remember the mind control? Yeah, tell Blackwatch that. As far as Captain Cross is concerned, I've gone batshit insane and freed Pariah on my own volition. Same for the rest of them, except they already thought I was batshit insane. Anyway, he looked pretty ready to try and put some holes in my head."

Dana swore. "Not. Good."

"Yeah, tell me about it." What hadn't gone wrong today?

"You need to get him back on your side. I don't know if you're that afraid of him as an enemy, but as an ally, he's got resources and connections that you really need. Especially now."

"And how the hell am I supposed to do that?" Alex looked up at her wearily. "When I last saw him, I don't think he felt up for a friendly chat. Just saying."

"Then put in some effort, dammit!" If she'd been sitting at a table, she would have slammed her palms on it. As it was, she hit her lap with more force than she'd end up appreciating later. "Listen, you can't just sit around here hoping everything fixes itself. When has that ever worked out?"

"It doesn't, but…" He gesticulated wildly. "I can't just leave you here and be away when he turns up here. I won't let him hurt you. I _won't_."

"Be rational, Alex." She forced herself to sound calm and diplomatic – her brother was really working himself up, and she knew full well that that was not going to end well for anyone. "This is the guy you've worked with for a while, right? You said he was different than the other soldiers you'd met. He's pissed at you right now – he's kind of got a point, it looks like you've turned traitor – but… well, I mean, he put up with me this morning, and all right, so I was bitching at him for a while. And he helped save the city. Call me stupid, but I don't think he'd be the type to just shoot me. Or kidnap me. Especially if I told him what he wanted. You're trying to find him, right? Please say yes."

Alex deliberated. Thinking was hard sometimes, when he had to do it on schedule. There were so many _thoughts_ – most not even his own – and they never felt _right_, no matter how strongly human logic supported them. It was so much easier to just fall back on what he _knew_, that red haze that needed no words for instruction and wasted no time pondering when action was required. And to make things even more confusing, logic – or morals, but sometimes they seemed the same where humanity was concerned – often told him that that was wrong or brutal or sick. But it only felt that way when he found himself wondering in retrospect. Not when he acted – pure meaning and motion without the muddling fog of ethics and consequences. Not when he simply _was_.

But while his gut instinct – did he have a gut anyway? Logic wasn't sure on that one – told him to plant himself down in the apartment like a snarling guard dog and tear Cross to shreds when he set foot on his territory, that higher, less familiar mental plane conceded that Dana had a point. Cross might have wanted his head on a pike, or something equally archaic, but assuming that Alex had defaulted to the side of the infection pretty much invariably meant Dana had nothing to do with it. Cross wasn't stupid – he'd realize that. From what he knew of the captain, he was pretty big on not killing innocents when it could be avoided. And it wouldn't matter anyways if he got to Cross first.

Still, he wasn't looking forward to their conversation.

'No, you're right. He wouldn't hurt you.' He sighed. 'He's… I don't think he's that sort of man. He's on my tail because I massively fucked up, and he thinks I did it on purpose. You have nothing to do with it."

"Congratulations, I think you've learned how to repeat yourself!" Dana said sarcastically. "Now shoo."

"Wait, what?" He sat up.

"You want to stop another Outbreak, don't you? Get moving. You need Cross on your side, and you _really_ need him not to be trying to kill you."

"I can't just leave you alone here," he wavered. "It's not safe. For all I know, Pariah's already spreading the virus."

She waved an impatient hand at the door. "Then hurry the fuck up, because you have to get working on stopping that thing."

He really wanted to protest, but… hadn't he come here for Dana's advice? His sister had a knack for knowing what to do. He, on the other hand, had a pretty bad track record with following his own initiative versus finding some sort of success. Unless success involved nothing more complex than a street full of Infected puree. In that case, he did pretty well for himself.

"Fine. But listen - if Cross shows up here, tell him whatever he asks. I'm not trying to hide anything, so don't worry about giving anything away. Say that I'm looking for him and that I don't want a fight. You could try to tell him what happened, but I don't think he'll take your word for it."

"Of course."

"I'll be back as soon as I can," he promised.

"You be careful out there, all right?" Dana pressed. "If Cross tries to attack, don't get in a fight – just back off and run if you have to."

He nodded, not bothering to mention that Cross was the least of his worries. "Of course."

He ignored Dana's surprised yelp when he yanked open the window and slid out, too focused on his task to remember frivolous human niceties. Instead of falling, he turned and clung to the building's side and hauled himself up to the roof.

Once on the periphery, he scowled, gazing out into Manhattan's sea of buildings. Was Cross even back in the city yet? He had no doubts that Blackwatch was going to eventually send their famed Specialist after him again, but he really had no time to spare. Well, if he wasn't here, he wasn't… but that was no excuse not to get started. He had a city to traverse and a scent to catch, and even though Pariah was probably somewhere in Brooklyn, he knew he'd had to keep his senses sharp for the kid, too. Pariah and Cross. How did he manage to get several powerful enemies after him in one day? There was probably something of karmic retribution in all of it.

…For that matter, how was he going to get the man's attention without starting a fight in the middle of a military base?

He really hated having to plan things out.

0o0o0

Halfway across the city, standing on the outskirts of a military outpost, Cross sighed.

"Well, fuck."

The two words accurately summed up his situation, but somehow seemed inadequate, as far as covering the amounts of fuck current events contained. Blackwatch's top-secret and most dangerous asset loose. His ally, turned traitor and sided with the Infection – as everyone else _besides him_ had managed to predict. Nigh entirely his fault on both being able to happen, too.

That alone made it hard to face his men, but he turned around anyways, forcing himself to meet their eyes. Not strictly on-duty, he could actually do that – most of them had taken off their helmets. They met his stare without challenge; not accusing, but with dark eyes all the same. There wasn't exactly much to be happy about right now.

"Look," he said tiredly. "You were right. All of you. I should have listened to your concerns… I just wanted to say that."

Private Black shifted uncomfortably. Like the rest of the unanimously virus-hating team, the young soldier had never trusted Mercer or his intentions. Hell, he had a wife and baby son in this very city to protect, the sort of people that Zeus saw as nothing more than lunch. But he'd been working with the Wiseman team for a year now, promoted directly into the ranks two months ago. In that short time, he'd come to respect Cross ardently, and hearing the man blame himself made him feel guilty for being _right_.

"You did, sir." He struggled to phrase it. "I… You just tried to see the best in everything. Even some things that didn't have any good in them."

The veteran sighed. "Trying to see the best in everything? In the military, as you know, that's better known as idealistic stupidity. I should have learned by now… But here's something that I _know_ doesn't have a 'best' to it. The situation at hand? Zeus has come into the open about his motives, and he's gained a new ally, codename Pariah."

There were some narrowed eyes – nobody knew of the name, but it promised nothing good. Blackwatch was good with its codenames like that. "Who the hell is Pariah?" Detwiller spoke the question on everyone's lips when he finally asked.

These days, Cross had taken to positioning himself just far away enough from the bases to be out of earshot or camera range. It probably wasn't a habit indicative of a loyal and devoted military man… but lately, he'd learned repeatedly that loyalty, duty, and truth tended to clash far too often. Also, Blackwatch had managed to pass sanctions which made civilians give their bases a wider berth for ease of deployment, and the lack of crowds meant that words spoken travelled farther. "All right, men, look. What I'm about to tell you is capital-fucking-letter Classified, and normally you'd probably all get shot by proxy just by hearing that name. But I get the feeling that by the end of the week, Pariah isn't going to be so clandestine anymore, so I'll give you a jump start.

"Hope, Idaho was the first incident involving the Redlight virus. You know this. There, Elizabeth Greene was captured and the contagion-overridden town destroyed. What was kept off the record was that Greene was pregnant when we got her. Her son is the only recorded instance of a surviving child being born infected with the virus. Most of the knowledge about him is limited to the scientists that have worked with his samples, but I can tell you this much – Pariah takes the form of a kid; he never aged beyond five or six years old. I've been told that it seems likely his intelligence is not limited to this level. The few reports I've been allowed to read indicated that every unprotected living thing he touched died of the infection at unusually high speeds, and that he has even more control over Redlight than codename Mother. He's been a Blackwatch asset ever since he was born in our custody."

"We kept some Redlight spawn _here_?" Detwiller demanded. "But – Elizabeth Greene was all on those Gentek nutcases, wasn't she? Why were _we_ holding onto some fucking infected baby? Were we trying to figure out how to kill it better?"

Cross inwardly sighed. Detwiller had a lot of faith in Blackwatch and its motives, the sort of unquestioning pride he'd held in his younger days. The last dregs of_ that _had all been washed away with the nuke… but Blackwatch was a bitter pill to swallow without that protective sugar coating. "I wish I could tell you, son," he admitted truthfully. "But these are things that are even higher up than I am, things I don't have clearance to know."

It wasn't that he actually knew, but he somehow doubted that that was the only purpose that they had in mind.

Black shifted. "About that," he said uncomfortably. "Uh, not for anything, Captain, but…"

"The entire thing went to hell in a handbasket? Oh, I hadn't noticed, private," Cross deadpanned. "The only _vaguely _good thing about it is that they need somebody capable at the helm _right now_, and they'll be too busy with Pariah to look too closely at Samson. But even then, it's far too suspicious. The second they look, they'd have to be blind not to see something's up. Right now, the best thing to do is to do _exactly _what we're told; lay low, relatively speaking. Remember that."

They didn't need to be told. Recent events hung over the members of the Wiseman squad like a thundercloud.

"Should we give HQ the cams on Mercer's apartment?" Detwiller questioned. He'd never liked keeping them solely to his squad to begin with.

"Yeah, because that one would go over well." The captain chuckled darkly. "'Hey, Red Crown, I've been keeping accurate tabs on our greatest enemy for about two months without informing you for reasons I'd rather keep to myself – would you want them now? And where did that firing squad come from?' No, I'm not. But we're going to have to check on those soon, see if Mercer went back there or if he's just dropped_ all_ his pretenses."

He sighed. "Besides, Zeus isn't the only one living there. Dana Mercer… I don't know. I feel sorry for her. Don't you?"

"She's thrown in her lot with Zeus," another Wiseman, Winder, growled. "Let her burn."

Cross shook his head. "No. I've met her. Fucked-up family aside… She's just a kid. And she can't escape us like her brother can – Blackwatch _will _let her burn, and that's the problem. You know that nobody's life is worth anything compared to stopping the spread of Redlight. But in her case, it's more than just an unfortunate kid getting caught in the crossfire. For whatever reason, Zeus is obsessed with the girl. If she dies, he'll go berserk."

"He's already fighting against us," Detwiller felt inclined to remind him.

"I'm not going to pretend I understand what's going on in that thing's head." Cross looked to the sky, where carrion crows made their constant presence. "But take away Dana Mercer and it's going to get a metric fuckton worse."

"So what do we do?" Black demanded. "I've got family living here. I'm not going to let Zeus or Pariah or the fucking devil trample this city."

"Yeah, well." Detwiller scratched his back. "We're probably fighting all three."

"Pariah seems to carry a unique strain of the virus," Cross answered. "Research is working on calibrating the viral detectors to accurately pick that up as well, but for now, we've been able to hash out a more broadened scope of where he is. Somehow – and border patrol is going to get shot for this – it seems like the kid came in over the Williamsburg bridge. No sign of a fight or anything. Something was fucked up with the detectors. Nobody's got any idea what's going on, but Pariah is in Manhattan. Almost certainly trailing after Zeus. It's our job to get to one of them before they rendezvous. HQ says they've made some new alterations to Bloodtox; we're waiting for the canisters to arrive, and then it's go time."

"Good," Winder stated. "I'm sick of this fucking waiting game."

He privately agreed. There was something horrible about knowing that so much was at stake and not being in a position to do anything about it. His skin was practically crawling with frustration.

Then something caught the veteran's eye. He swiveled around to pinpoint it…

…There. At first, it might have been merely a trick of tired eyes, but then it happened again, and Cross was not a man who believed in coincidence. Outside of the little boxed-in nook his team was assembled in, the street was shivering slightly. Just a slight warp of the asphalt, gentle and fluid enough to be an illusory heat haze – but it was halfway through autumn, and a distinct chill had settled in the air. _Something_ was moving under it.

Cross cursed under his breath, his mind flashing back to the Hydras he'd encountered, the footage of Elizabeth Greene in her monstrous cocoon. New York's subway system had provided a wonderful set of tunnels for the Infected to use, and more than one Blackwatch squad had been eradicated by thinking themselves in a safe position without accounting for below.

He thrust his hand toward the disturbance. "Eyes open, there's something under there," he said, voice low but imperious. "Guns ready!"

His order was immediately followed by his dozen-and-a-half subordinates; the tension in the air was brittle and stifling.

He flinched in surprise when a very small hole suddenly split the street – popped was really a better word for it – and the smallest of tentacles poked up through the crack. It was slick, black, and otherwise featureless; a far cry from the Hydras that had vanished as of late, but still clearly something spawned from the Infection. Immediately, the Wisemen trained their guns on it.

The little tendril wiggled, then nimbly slipped back down into its hole and out of sight.

"Shit," Black swore. "There's definitely something there. What the hell…?"

Another one surfaced, farther away and closer to the side of the street. It thrashed once as if _trying_ to be noticed, then wrapped around the wheel of a parked car and thrust it with a quick flick. The empty vehicle screeched as it spun sideways into the middle of the street; in the meantime, the second tentacle had also vanished.

Several of the Wisemen swore, and nearly all of them moved forward concurrently. Whatever this mystery thing was, it was strong for its size… or there was a _lot_ of it hidden.

Manhattan's sidewalks were dotted with periodically arranged open spots for foliage, like the city could trick itself into thinking nature existed with a handful of choked and scraggly trees. At the very end of the street, one of them was rustling vigorously – through his scopes, Cross could make out a thin coil of black pressed up against the trunk.

His tone was businesslike and as cold as steel. "Follow it!" he ordered, breaking into a long and quick stride.

Like a pack of hounds, they latched onto the trail; Cross at the head, the unchallenged alpha. Whatever they were chasing was making no effort to hide itself. Another dark shape broke from an intersection ahead; Black managed to fire off a shot that hit it squarely in its base. _Kid has good reflexes_, the captain noted – given a few years of experience, he'd go far. He'd recently had to find a lot of new recruits for his nearly decimated team, but the men he'd found were all skilled and capable in their own right – not just replacements. His team would never be that to him.

The wounded tentacle pulled back into shelter, but not before the street gave an ominous heave. Cross halted, holding up a fist; the line of men behind him froze seamlessly. Moments later, a large part of the street buckled and bent upwards, clearly turning to the side avenue. Through breaks in the asphalt, he could see something thick and black rippling underneath; a coil of an eldritch sea serpent. He was right – this thing _was_ big, and it was clearly going somewhere.

The Wisemen were onto the new street before the disturbed section of pavement had settled again, occasionally stopping to shoot at the ground. Winder pulled a few grenades from his satchel – two frags, one stun, and one standard Bloodtox – and threw them into one of the larger holes. Moments later, a much larger section jerked sideways, although no pained sound issued from underground. Several of the men swore – in its involuntary spasm, the unknown Infected had revealed a large part of its position, and the ridge in the street traveled several blocks forward before turning _again_.

Hydras were known to have underground networks, but all of those things had vanished shortly after codename Mother's death. This creature was too thin and long anyways, and too silent; Copperheads shrieked like demons when hit. And that also failed to explain the smaller tentacles that still appeared and retreated ahead of them like a demented Infected version of whack-a-mole.

Cross's eyes narrowed. This was highly unusual behavior; simply appearing and disappearing, without any sort of visible engagement. His suit reported no higher concentrations of airborne Redlight than usual, either, so it couldn't have been releasing the contagion. If anything, it looked like some strange game of hide-and-seek; was this one of Pariah's tricks?

"Be careful," he warned as they changed streets again. "I don't like this."

"No shit, Sherlock," Winder muttered from behind, but Cross chose to pretend he hadn't heard it. Everyone was on edge, and Winder was always pretty abrasive anyways. It was the reason why he was still stuck at second lieutenant after a very long service. He was also one of the three Wisemen besides Cross himself that was left of the original force that had engaged Zeus, and the guy had a reason to be freaked out at the sight of tentacles.

Ahead of them, the path continued to unfold. Out of sanctioned territory, foot traffic was thick, but Cross's team managed to push through the panicking pedestrians with a few orders and occasional threats. Still, it was harder to see what they were supposed to be following, and it might have been lost entirely if it wasn't so obviously nudging around cars. And even then, he had to guess its position from the areas where civilians were running away from.

Thankfully, the crowds dispersed as the winding trail took Cross to a less-traversed side street. The strange tremors led him into the meager 'backyard' of two back-to-back apartment buildings; a strange, jutting, cramped plane of dying grass, discarded appliances, and haphazard turns that formed pseudo-alleyways into the ground-floor tenants' rooms.

A little dark tentacle waved at the very farthest bend, and he narrowed his eyes, speeding up.

A thread of ice clenched over his heart as he turned around the building's corner and found himself facing an old brick wall, dusted in faded vulgar graffiti. Of _course_ – why had he been so damnably stupid, just merrily following a trail that was so obviously -

"Guns up, men!" he barked, yanking out his own from his belt. "It's a trap!"

He whirled around, just in time to see a shadow slide off an apartment's roof and fall to the grass, blocking their way out. He remained still on the ground momentarily, one hand splayed out, before slowly and _very _carefully getting up to his feet, both palms held in the air in a clear gesture of surrender.

Cross registered surprise for about a moment before quickly retreating back into the well-treaded grounds of 'well, _that's_ just perfect' and 'I am not getting paid enough for this'.

"Mercer," he spat, wondering if he could radio in support before the majority of his team was systematically wiped out again. Then he remembered just how smoothly the bastard had been playing him for the past two months, and the thought was dismissed in a flicker of almost irrational disgust. The germ had played him for a fool, and he still owed him for slaughtering his men in that ill-fated ambush eternities ago. This was _personal_.

"Cross."

The Blacklight virus's voice was neutral, and that pissed him off even more. Was he being cocky with him, playing with the lives of his soldiers like it was all some sort of sick joke? It probably was… or it wasn't, was it? Emptiness was the only thing that abomination had, once ungodly rage had burned itself out and madness felt no whimsy to manifest itself. He was dead, a shell – Cross doubted that even if Mercer won and managed to infect the entire country with his diseased friends, he'd have any sense of satisfaction. How was a virus supposed to _feel_? How had he been stupid enough to hope that maybe Mercer could?

"All right, look… I… fuck, how am I supposed to say this? I know you probably don't want to hear me out. But I'm not here to start fighting. What happened in the base – I swear, it isn't how it looks…"

The captain wasn't registering his words. He _heard_ them, but the possibility of Mercer being honest just didn't compute. He didn't need to order his team to know they were already aiming for the new target, and it occurred blackly to him that they should stay out of it. From past experience, Mercer tended to leave non-combatants alone if he was actively engaging something else, unless he was picking off somebody nearby for regeneration – Cross would need to lure the bastard away and out of range from his soldiers. He'd let them down with his naivety and idealism, and even now – following a pretty trail without a modicum of the caution it should have merited. It wasn't fair to them, and he wasn't going to let them throw themselves between him and Zeus again.

"Stay back unless things go south," Cross warned the Wisemen, not taking his eyes off Mercer. "This is my score to settle."

Electricity raced up his shock stick in threatening arcs – the alleyway was much too narrow to allow for the veteran's other preferred weapon, but grenade launchers had a poor record against Zeus anyway, while voltage was surprisingly effective. It almost didn't matter that what he was doing was probably suicidal; some weird combination of honor and anger and mentally kicking himself for being an idiot was doing a pretty good job of keeping logic tied up and gagged in a corner somewhere.

"Cross, I'm not trying to – ah, god_damm_it!"

Mercer leapt backwards a moment too late; burning electricity seared through his skin. It dissipated into tingly numbness quickly enough, but his arms were writing spastically for a few seconds longer, coiling with biomass randomly and refusing to form into any coherent weapons –

But this wasn't the time to fight, no matter what layer upon layer of battle-hardened instincts screamed otherwise. He forced himself to step back and keep his limbs human.

"Will you _please_ put that thing away?" How the hell was he supposed to go about this, anyway? Calming people down via any other means than decapitation was not exactly on his resume.

Apparently, he was doing it wrong, because it was pretty obvious that his request went entirely over its recipient's head.

He backpedaled as Cross moved forward like a leopard, calculating and menacing – well, it would have been menacing to anyone else – and ever-so-clearly searching for the best opportunity to strike. Alex was really not used to slow retreats, and he bumped up against a brick wall with a second's amateurish surprise.

In his business, he knew, a second was already massively overstepping your grace period. He felt Cross lunge at him through the air currents and the give of the dirt beneath him, and he dove to the ground; the stun baton hit brick, close enough to him for him to feel the air crackle with its charge. He rolled to the side and sprung to his feet in a backflip, forcing Cross to pull away or get kicked in the face.

"For the love of god," Mercer muttered as the two found themselves facing again. "Look, I-"

Again, he didn't get a chance to talk; the Wiseman captain was apparently not too big on melodramatic circling and spouting lines, and instead came at Mercer once more. He sidestepped with less efficacy than he usually did – his first instinct was to duck under the attack and go for the obvious opening with deadly blades and brute force, and it took crippling moments away from his reaction time to pick a different course. The man darted forward with more speed than any human had a right to possess, Alex noted crossly as he leapt out of the way, clinging to an apartment's fourth-story balcony with his off hand. Why couldn't he be arguing with somebody he could just hoist up by the throat and shake around?

"Cross, you fucking retard, I'm trying to be _diplomatic _here!" he bellowed.

"So _talk_, you damned animal," the Specialist snarled up at him, pulling his automatic rifle from his belt. "What more do you want?"

But with that, Cross at least paused; he was still in a fighting stance, ready to lash out at a moment's notice, but he'd at least stilled, and he took his hand away from the gun's holster. He could still draw it in under a second's time if need be, but it seemed like a good sign, as far as gestures were concerned. His eyes were distrustful and his mouth a thin, hard line, almost daring Alex to come forth on his promises. It was not a friendly challenge, but it looked like it was the only chance he'd get.

"All right. Hold your fire, just for one damn second." The soldier gave no indication that he'd heard, but the fact that he wasn't shooting Alex down would have to be good enough. "Hold on."

He let go, forcing his legs to relax and feathering out his density so that he landed on the grass relatively neatly, only causing a depression in the clay-rich soil underneath rather than a pulverizing shockwave. That would have been a bit of a setback.

He could practically feel the barrels of several guns following him as he straightened up, hands up once more, and he grimaced. "Look – hell, Cross, I know it looks bad. But I _need_ to know. Where is Pariah? You're the one with eyes all over the city, and I need to find him before everything falls apart."

"So you can do a better job at making it fall apart? Sure, Mercer, I'll call over your friend and grill some hamburgers for your end-of-the-world party. Can you handle the invitations?"

"Fucking _listen_ to me. I didn't mean to release him," Mercer grated. "And I want to mop up this mess before it gets any worse."

"And I'm supposed to believe that?" Cross kept a neutral face, but his mind was whirling. The only reason he'd hesitated even for a moment was because it was brutally clear that Zeus wasn't fighting back. His movement patterns made no sense, just repeated half-assed attempts to disengage without actually leaving. Zeus had every opportunity to attack – the cloistered space would have let him vaporize everyone in a single impact or cluster of groundspikes. And if he'd wanted to escape, again, the terrain played to his advantage. The land-bound Wisemen had no chance of catching up with him on the rooftops. So he'd paused, and in that, he'd given Mercer a chance without really realizing it.

And then he started talking, and things just made that much less sense.

"I didn't try to free Pariah. Why the _fuck_ would I want to see everything happen all over again? In fact, if I'd _known_ he was in the city, I might have realized when he started fucking around in my head. You know the hivemind, Cross, the chain of command? I'm not normally a part of it, but I can be. I've connected to them before… but this was different. Got pulled into it. I'd done everything you told me to, and I was on my way out… I guess I was close enough for him to reach me. All I know is that I started hearing this voice. I don't know how to describe it."

The veteran snorted despite himself. "Do you just listen to everyone who tells you to do something? Word of advice… actually, no. Go home, head west until you reach the factory, and take a swim in the Bloodtox vats. I hear it's excellent for the skin."

"Fuck off, Cross. I wasn't just listening to it. I couldn't ignore it; I couldn't even _think_ of ignoring it. I can hardly remember what the hell happened. An elevator. Some guards. It's all just flashes. One minute, I was in some copy-and-paste hallways looking for the damn way out, and the next, I find myself in an unsealed containment cell on the receiving end of some creepy kid's 'embrace your family' monologue." He scowled. "He started screwing with me again, so I tried to attack him, but I couldn't string two moves together. The little bastard kept up with the bullshit speech until he heard you coming and ran. Then you came in and started wasting my time, and he got away."

"So, basically," the captain summed up in a voice like undiluted acid, "you're saying you freed the kid because the voices in your head told you to."

The sarcasm struck Alex with the precision of a bullet fired by a blindfolded alcoholic on an LSD trip. "Pretty much, yeah. Didn't realize he was controlling me until I freed him, though. And even then, I couldn't really fight it. Not enough."

"If Pariah is _mind-controlling_ you," Cross said icily, "what do you expect to gain from chasing after him?"

"I don't _know!"_ Mercer burst out, wringing his hands – it was an oddly human gesture. Despite his angry words, Cross couldn't deny that it all seemed genuine – the viral abomination had never been much of an actor, and there was no mistaking the uncharacteristic stress straining his usually inscrutable face. He had to admit that the thought of Mercer suddenly siding with what he so vehemently detested had made no sense to him anyway. "But I have to do _something_, Cross. I can't just let him run free all over the city. Not again."

"Well, I can see why you need everyone to think out your plans for you," he muttered, under his breath. "All right, Zeus. Why the fucking game?"

"Viral detectors. Had to get you away from the base. It's sort of hard to talk when it's raining artillery."

"I can still arrange for that."

"Cross, I swear to…" Alex paused. His memories often swore by God, or somebody's grave, but he couldn't say he was much of a believer and there was nobody dead that he cared about. Definitely a lot of dead, though. What _did_ matter, anyways, in a way the captain would understand? "I swear on Dana's life and happiness, I didn't want to free Pariah. I didn't mean to free Greene and I didn't mean to set her son loose, and I am deadly serious when I say that I want to stop him."

Cross's eyebrows rose. From Zeus, that was a pretty serious declaration. Then again, words were really just words… He deliberated. It was very unlike Mercer to pull a trick like this on them, assuming it_ was_ a trick. There would be no point in him going out of his way to lead them to their deaths when he could have – and would have been naturally inclined towards regardless – attempted to kill him and his team on the spot. Instead, he'd stopped. And wanted to talk things out. Which was _also_ extremely atypical of the viral abomination he'd known, but Cross couldn't imagine what Zeus could possibly gain from lying that he wouldn't through brute force. And Zeus _always _went with brute force when viable. Which left the strange – and oddly hopeful – possibility that Mercer was actually telling the truth.

"God_ help_ me," he finally muttered. "I have no fucking idea why I'm handing out second chances, but for whatever reason, Mercer, I believe you. This is probably going to get me killed," he added halfheartedly. "But it's not like the odds were any better otherwise."

He extended a hand; the Blacklight virus shook it gratefully. There was a very uncharacteristic, almost fervent note to his voice when he spoke. "Thanks, Cross. You have my word, I'll give you whatever you need to take Pariah down-"

"Captain!" Detwiller demanded. He couldn't help but shrink back at the man's glare, but he held firm. "You can't be serious! That thing already betrayed you once…"

"If all of this is true, then he never did," Cross snapped. This whole day was just turning out to be one massive load of crap, and he needed some damned time to think. "And if he does turn out to be lying, that's when we all shoot."

Mercer found this unsettlingly similar to his own 'strategic' deliberations, but given his rather precarious position, decided against commenting.

"And Mercer, don't think you're out of the woods yet. Just because you apparently didn't mean to free Pariah doesn't mean it wasn't your fault. Once all this shit is over with, there _will _be a reckoning."

"Go ahead," he conceded. "Won't say it's undeserved. But I'm going to make a request in return."

"You're in no position to bargain." Cross was not amused.

"It's for your own good." His icy eyes flashed. "Remember what caused Hope. Maybe I'm doing a royal job of fucking up everything by accident, but humanity doesn't seem to be too great at coaching itself either. So here's a hint. I have no idea how this is going to go down. But when we do get Pariah, kill him. Don't recapture him and stick him back in that cell. In the words of the late Doctor McMullen, 'I want it on a slab'. Maybe not how he meant it, but whatever. Your little forays into the world of genetic engineering are dealing with forces you don't understand. I'm proof of that, Greene's proof of that. I should have thought that would have been enough, but apparently you still thought you could hang onto Pariah like he's some sort of harmless resource. When I visited Gentek's fifty-first floor, the security was already shot to hell. Greene had already broken out; she was just waiting for me, for whatever reason. Even now, I don't know _how_ she did it, but she got past all of your tech on her own. Pariah might have been locked up just fine, but would that have lasted forever? The virus is much too dangerous to just screw around with it. You're just _asking_ for trouble. The only completed experiment that came from Redlight after forty years of work is standing in front of you and has caused the military upwards of six hundred billion dollars worth of damage, so I'm not really sure you can call it a success. Fire your mad scientists, scrap the projects. If you really need ways to kill everyone on the planet, you've already got nukes for that."

Cross nodded, ignoring the barb at the end. He wasn't going to argue with that; he had to admit that Mercer had surprised him with that one. It was the same opinion that he followed, himself.

"I can comply with that," he allowed. "But only because I already planned on it. You're not heading anything, Zeus. You're damn lucky I'm even letting you in at all."

"Oh, I'm _honored_." Clearly, Mercer's gratitude period had run out.

"You're not part of the team, Mercer. Don't screw with me, don't screw with my men." The veteran glowered. "Just because your story might be plausible doesn't mean I'm convinced. I'm keeping my eye on you," he warned. "One slip and I'm done trying to hear you out."

Alex nodded curtly, all business again. "Understood."

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	7. They Rekindle With Vengeance

Private Geoffrey D. Black was not happy.

Nothing in the army was ever glorious, and he knew what to expect by now. Setting up for a mission was something he was used to. Doing most of the heavy lifting for that was just a part of the 'junior member' package. Hauling around two large containers of unknown chemical agents that could probably eat him alive was unpleasant if he stopped to think about the implications on his lifespan – not to mention the stuff still smelled like ass – but fairly standard routine for Blackwatch.

There were a lot of things that Jeff would do for Captain Cross. Working alongside the most revolting and obviously treacherous creature known to mankind was on the very edge of that spectrum. And pushing it, hard.

Said creature was hovering near the concave corner of two buildings, scowling at the recently-arrived supply truck. And at Black. Or maybe it was just the ungodly chemical cocktail he was hefting around. Whatever. The feeling was mutual.

For the life of him, he couldn't understand why the _hell _they were still working with Zeus. The thing had apparently just jump-started the Outbreak version 2.0, and shown its true colors as plain as day… and all it has to do is wave some tentacles around and make up a few lies, and suddenly it's all just a misunderstanding? It utterly defied belief that his captain was just taking everything at face value, and it made him want to scream. It was like Cross knew more than they did, but he didn't; he'd told them all the details of his every encounter with Zeus, all of the information he had on him. The consensus among the team was the same; the monster that had once been Alex Mercer was absolutely insane, untrustworthy, and dangerous as all hell. Defeating Greene, the Hunter thing that had been on the Reagan – it was all a power trip, eliminating all of the Infected competition so he could take the reins himself. It was a shame they'd never tracked down whoever had tried to nuke the city, because Black would have shook that terrorist's hand with real gratitude before shooting his brains out. Closest anyone had ever come to wiping out Zeus, and even then, it had only gone off the map for about a day before showing up again, still thriving. He had to wonder why some unknown organization had bombed the Reagan, but those details weren't for a private to know.

But Cross's word was law. He wasn't the type of leader to shoot you for questioning it, but the sort of respect that engendered entirely covered the gap more often filled by fear in other units. Disobedience was unheard of, even if the current situation left everyone feeling noticeably closer to it.

That didn't stop him from sometimes wondering what he'd gotten himself into. It was like a progressive ladder of insanity with no way back down. Back when he was just a kid in high school, the military had seemed like a great idea – a respectable job and a free ride through college afterwards. He'd loved playing first-person shooters, too… so he hadn't really been prepared for everything else that came along with the package of being a soldier. But he'd gotten accustomed to the regimented lifestyle quickly enough, and more importantly, he was _good_. Good enough to get noticed and approached by another job offer. A place in a special operations unit. It sounded like an _adventure_ – exciting, like he was getting a place in secret service. Like it'd be the sort of video game experience that sent you on all the cool tasks and ended up saving the world singlehandedly.

It wasn't. He'd done things he hadn't wanted to do. He'd seen things he hadn't wanted to see. He'd left New York for a year and a half for some off-the-radar work in Afghanistan, and when he'd been called back to his home – the city that held his love and his baby boy – he'd found it a hellhole. But if he hardened himself – closed his eyes and numbed himself to everything he'd done – he was still good. Good enough to climb the ladder once more before his ill-met homecoming. The spec ops of spec ops. The Wiseman team.

Cross's force had seemed like such an honor at the time. It still was. He'd been prepared for the danger, but not the kind of danger that came alongside blatantly disobeying Blackwatch as a whole and consorting with madmen… no, mad _things_ behind its back. Calling Zeus a _man _was just wrong on so many levels.

His only consolation was, strangely enough, his current site of deployment. Manhattan was one giant clusterfuck, but he was home, in a pretty twisted sense of the word. His post didn't allow him much time to see his family, although he called them as often as was allowed, but he knew that he was doing as much to protect them as he could. Cross had pulled some strings for him – yet another one of those things he worshipped the man for – and gotten Jessica and baby William an apartment very close to the main base on the island. Proximity to the military meant safety, and given the quarantine, such property was a hot commodity. It wasn't even a matter of cost – if you didn't have friends in high places, you weren't getting there. But they _were _there, in one of the few protected places Manhattan had left, and now it was his job to go out and make the rest of the city safe for his budding family.

With a grunt, he rolled down one canister into the storage compartment of the transport helicopter that they'd been granted, then set down the other. As he turned around to grab some more, he noticed Mercer was still glaring at the Bloodtox containers, although he seemed to notice he was being observed pretty quickly and turned his irritated gaze on Black again.

Zeus had managed to unsettle him for other reasons, ones he couldn't just glare back at. He didn't understand what the monster had said about Hope, but the rest of it struck eerily home, in a way he didn't want to admit to himself. Those things… Greene, her kid that was apparently running around the city? What the hell were they _thinking_, keeping them alive? What was possibly there to gain by holding onto the virus? If they existed to fight it, why weren't they burning out its very incarnation?

He bent over and grabbed another two of the oversized cylinders from the truck, returning to the transport again. It made him furious that Zeus was, for once, making sense. Even if it was just spouting relatively reasonable-sounding crap for its own purposes… he really hated having to agree with it. At least he had some digressions, though. Pariah definitely needed to die, and so did Zeus. Redlight, Blacklight, whatever the difference was – it all needed to be wiped off the map. He just hoped he'd live long enough to see it.

"Hey, Mercer." That was his captain, who was checking some of the detector equipment at the transport's front. "Go on and help Black out. Not all of us can carry tank chasses around."

_Oh no no no please no just stay the fuck away from me, _the private silently prayed. Cross might have meant well, but Black was already much too close to the monster for comfort. What if there was a tear in his suit somewhere? What if it _touched_ him, and that godforsaken biological armageddon found its way into his system? Everyone else was already tasked – Detwiller was assembling and stocking the weapons, Winder always ended up in charge of the explosives, Sullivan had packing – but he'd much rather work alone than get assigned _this_ kind of help.

Mercifully, Zeus was equally unendeared to the proposition. "No thanks," it grunted. "Not getting any nearer to that stuff than I have to."

"It's not leaking, is it?" Cross asked, a sharp note in his voice.

"No, not really. Some of it's always going to effuse out, but you're not losing it, if that's what you're wondering." Mercer eyed the private's progress as if expecting the canisters to jump out of the man's arms and attack him. "I don't know. Feels like something's off. Whatever's in this crap, a part of it smells familiar. Can't quite place it. Don't like it."

"It's Bloodtox, Mercer. I know you've got thicker skin against it than you used to, but I wasn't expecting you to like that shit."

"It's not, though. Is this a different batch?"

"You could say." Cross finished fiddling with a few dials. "All right, I think that covers it. This thing isn't picking you up anymore. Can't have you getting in the way of our scans if we ever want to find Pariah."

"You can do that?" Immediately, Zeus was interested. "Prevent it from picking up certain strains?"

"Yes, and I'm sure as fuck not telling you how to program this, so don't ask. Besides, that's only with the helicopters. Some of them have radars that can specifically different particular versions of the virus. Most detectors are just all or nothing where everything Redlight-based is concerned."

"Oh." He understood; he'd used one before, to find a particular Hunter whose strain he needed to cure a parasite. Still, he was disappointed – it would have been useful if he had a smoother way to slip past viral detectors.

He watched the soldier – Black, apparently – head back to the truck, picking up two of the four remaining cylinders of that hated chemical cocktail. He was hardly prolific at reading people, but he could practically smell the distrust radiating from the man – scents that cleaved to no definable description but evoked responses all the same. Under the cloying-death-rot reek of Bloodtox, Black was a particularly appetizing amalgam of aggression and panic. Well, if he was afraid of getting eaten, he was certainly doing a good job of worsening his odds… Memories told him that humans never seemed to have the same sort trouble with their instincts as he did – possibly because his own cravings were immeasurably more carnal and never seemed to go hand in hand with making Dana happy. But while their seeming mastery of their own behavior eluded him, _hiding_ what they actually felt was not along their bag of tricks. He wondered if Black knew just how hostile he came off as… The same could be said of every last one of the mooks, though. They were more eager to attack him than he was to them, and he was a man-eating predator with a massive instinctual drive towards that end and a blanket vendetta on their organization. It was almost funny, in a barely-repressing-murder sort of way.

Black finished another trip and returned to pick up the last two canisters; the sharp clicking of rounds being slotted into place snapped from the other side of the truck. The captain was discussing something with the pilot. His voice became a soft, meaningless buzz in Mercer's ears as he imagined himself blazing through a street of Infected, flesh splitting and blood spraying under his unstoppable claws. Delicious frenzy, instant gratification. None of this agonizing waiting…

"All right, we're cleared." Evidently satisfied, Cross stepped back from the cockpit and lifted his voice. "Everyone board! Sooner we get moving, the better."

Alex headed around the transport and made to climb in through the back, but halted when he saw Cross's men had beaten him to it. He backtracked a few steps and hung back until the last subordinate had entered, giving the distrustful – and distrusted – team a wide berth.

Upon boarding, he noted with some amusement that the seating arrangements had not changed at all.

That really suited everyone perfectly, though, as Mercer folded himself into an alert position on the mostly-empty bench. Well, it suited pretty much everyone besides Cross, who was distinctly unhappy with the viral abomination and was not as willing to put up with its crap as he'd been yesterday. But he was the group's only hope of for a medium between themselves and Zeus, so he forced himself to man up and sit alongside him.

He still had his suspicions, but logic aside, Mercer appeared genuinely upset by everything that was going on. He'd been pacing like a caged animal while waiting for Cross's team to get instructions, his arms constantly shivering with tentacles that seemed more involuntary than intentional. He seemed a little less rattled now than he'd been last night, though; he'd finally gone back north to his sister, telling Cross to contact him when there was an update. The captain had been happy to oblige. None of his men could focus with an agitated Alex Mercer stomping around.

Well, it was a good thing Dana seemed to have a way with her somewhat-brother, because while Mercer still looked as happy as a drenched cat, at least he was holding onto his human form. That relieved Cross more than he'd admit – he did _not_ like looking at those shifting, wriggling tendrils. It made him wonder – queasily – what happened inside of _him_ when his own modified strain patched up crippling injuries and regenerated torn flesh.

The floor shivered as the helicopter started to lift.

Apparently, Dana had been searching for data on Pariah, but she'd been unable to find anything. The captain wasn't surprised – the kid was in such deep cover that one could get shot simply for hearing his name. It almost didn't matter how good of a hacker Dana Mercer was; there was probably nothing to find. If you wanted data about Pariah, you had to find the right people and pry it out of their heads… She'd also instructed Alex to vicariously thank Cross for her, on behalf of putting up with her brother again. Cross wasn't really sure what to say to that. He still wasn't certain what side Mercer was on.

Right now, though, he needed all of the help he could get. And the Blacklight virus was too powerful an asset to pass up, even if part of the reason he was taking him along was to keep an eye on him.

Alex took a glance around. It was pretty hard to tell when everyone was masked, but it looked like Cross had brought along the same team of around maybe a dozen and a half that he'd travelled with yesterday. Either the Wiseman team was a lot smaller than he'd expected, or there were a ton of echelons to it, and this was a branch of the field deployment. Or the captain was playing favorites. Or something. It didn't really matter.

The Wisemen were silent, partly because they were waiting for Cross to give them their instructions, and partly because the presence of a Blacklight abomination in a hoodie dampened the desire for conversation.

Alex, being himself, was not averse to his own presence and still wanted to know what the hell Cross was expected him to do, so he ended up being the one to break the tension.

"So," Mercer folded his arms. "You're packing Bloodtox. All right, I guess. Bloodtox didn't work for long against me; it could be a good shot against Pariah, but I really hope you've got more up your sleeve than that."

Black scowled at the creature's obvious information prying. The sick part was, the captain would probably hand over everything it wanted to know. Why couldn't he see how massive a mistake he was making?

"It's the best we've got right now. It's not the same stuff, though. Research has been toying with it for the past month. They've made some alterations. Besides, Pariah hasn't had a chance to develop a resistance to it yet. You didn't seem to be too fond of the stuff when we were first deploying it."

"What sort of… alterations?" Zeus asked dubiously, looking none too happy. Probably searching for a way to resist it before it was deployed on him.

Thankfully, the captain didn't have an answer. "No idea. They were designing it for you, though. Want to test it out?"

"I'll give it a miss." Mercer rolled his eyes. "Knew something smelled off about it. Whatever. So, what's your plan?"

"We locate Pariah. You go and engage him as best you can. Try to hold onto his attention – we can provide some fire support, but I need him to be focusing on you and not us. Lure him close enough to us and we'll hit him with Bloodtox – not that I care, but you might want to get out of the way when that starts. While he's incapacitated, we'll tranquilize him. It's the stuff Gentek engineered to keep codename Mother passive – it'll work."

Given his own first meeting with Elizabeth Greene, Alex was inclined to doubt that, but he had more paramount concerns. "And if I'm not in a position to move when you start spraying Bloodtox everywhere?"

"If you can't get away, too bad. Your well-being is not on the top of my priorities list, Mercer. I'm not going to _try_ to kill you, but that's about the full extent of my generosity towards you." Cross squinted. "What makes you think you won't be able get out of range? You've never had a problem with disengaging before."

"I've also never had a problem getting my body to move before, but Pariah… if he wasn't messing around in my head, I'd have him bisected in two seconds flat."

"Hmph. That. I've been meaning to ask you about that, Mercer. If you say the kid's able to control you, what's stopping you from being a complete liability?"

"If you're worried about me attacking your men, don't. He can't _control_ me if I know he's trying to pull one on me… I just sort of can't do too much more than fight him off." Damn it, why was he telling Cross and his team such a glaring weak point?

"How well do you think he'll be able to focus on you when he's being shot at?" Cross pointed out. "You were alone when you encountered him, right?"

Alex's expression brightened fractionally. It hadn't occurred to him. "Good point. Don't know. He seemed pretty eager to book it when he heard your squadron coming."

"And I'm wrong, you're still a perfect distraction while we're setting up."

"Since when am I a _distraction?_" Mercer was affronted.

"Since you started needing my help. Now can it or go do this on your own."

Alex scowled. The thought of _needing_ the captain's help was ridiculous… but… was that actually the truth? He certainly didn't have the ability to face down Pariah alone. But since when had he depended on anyone else in a fight? Nobody could keep up with him, nobody had his durability or power - he worked alone. It was as simple as that.

Despite himself, he felt an atypical curl of apprehension settle somewhere in his stomach. Cross's plan was sound enough, but Pariah was the worst kind of foe he'd encountered – an anomaly that defied all means by which he knew how to fight. He _was_ a distraction, incapable of contributing much more than an attractive target towards the mission. Power that could rip apart buildings and throw tanks was reduced to mere helpless struggling. He truly _was_ relying on the captain and his team – hell, he was relying on _Blackwatch _– to come through. It was a bitter and uncomfortable realization.

Turning his head, he frowned – now that he paid attention, he could hear a faint, fast beeping coming from somewhere.

A voice called from the cockpit. "We've got some readings here. Significantly high."

"Circle around," Cross called back. "Try to pinpoint it, then land."

The muted beeps from the cockpit grew quicker and then slowed down again as the transport banked, then gradually sped up once more. Alex drummed his fingers on his lap as the helicopter began its descent.

"How do you know we're not just flying over a hive or something?"

"For starters, there's a window in the cockpit," Cross sighed. For something with the combined memories of some of the most brilliant minds in the country, Mercer was not the sharpest marble in the socket. "The pilot can see what he's doing. Second, we've had the kid in captivity for forty years. We have samples. His strain is unique. Not as distinct as yours, but it's far enough from Greene's version of Redlight to be pretty clear-cut when it comes to distinguishing strains, and it's got enough similarities to normal Redlight that our standard equipment can pick it up. HQ updated all of the scanners last night with Pariah's species of the virus; that's all we're looking for right now."

"Fine. I just want to get this over with."

"Hmph." Typical. Then again, the captain would be lying if he didn't feel exactly the same way.

"All right, landing," the pilot announced. "The target's somewhere in Midtown East. Readings were greatest in this general vicinity."

"Understood," Cross replied. "Everyone, out. We've got work to do."

The doors were opened as soon as the chopper touched ground; Mercer disembarked first, eager to get out of the confined space. The captain followed closely, offhandedly fiddling with his arm-mounted grenade launcher.

"Why are there always people _everywhere_?" Alex muttered, staring balefully at the crowds of civilians milling around the street. How they'd landed without crushing any of them, he had no idea; people never had the good sense to get out of his way when _he_ was driving. But if there was a fight in the works, it'd be a hell of a lot easier if he could use his more area-impaling styled techniques with impunity. "Cross, do you want me to scare them off?"

"Show some discretion or I'm going to be forced to call in a strike team on you to cover my own ass. Technically, the only time I have license not to shoot you is if I'm fighting something else." The veteran scowled as some of the more foolhardy denizens of New York began to crowd around the landed transport and the dismounting soldiers. Some were just morbidly curious, and others were shouting obscenities that were probably better directed at Blackwatch as a whole than his team. "Still, I appreciate the sentiment. Maybe you're not as hopeless as I thought."

Alex tuned out Cross as the man raised his voice and started reciting some typical spiel about official military operations. To his surprise, though, it actually worked to a degree; not clearing the street by a long shot, but at least forming a wide berth around the helicopter. Some of the angrier civilians still clustered around, thought, demanding the locations of their loved ones and telling them to get the hell out of the city. Mercer wasn't much into common culture, but it was gratifying to see that Blackwatch was not well-received by the denizens of New York City.

Detwiller, who was the last to get off the transport, scowled fiercely under his mask. He could live without gratitude, but it continually blew his mind that people were too stupid to realize everything Blackwatch was doing for them. The fucking idiots should have been thanking them on bended knee for risking so much to protect their stupid lives. Taking a few long strides forward, he hefted up his grenade launcher and jabbed it threateningly towards the direction of the starting mob. "Shut up and fuck off," he threatened, "or I'm gonna blow your asses into next year. I am authorized to use deadly force, am I fuckin' clear?"

A barely audible growl rumbled from Alex's direction, but he didn't move. This was _exactly_ why he hated Blackwatch… well, one of the reasons, anyway. He definitely had a full-fledged list by now. This ranked fairly high, though. Civilians were stupid, yeah, but Blackwatch strutted around like they owned the place, like they'd purchased the rights to Manhattan and had every justification to tear it apart. He wasn't sure why it rubbed him so strongly – what _was_ Manhattan to him anyway? – but he had a nagging suspicion that beneath all of the logical reasons he could throw towards it, the feeling had its roots in a deeper part of his mind. The part that had been doing a terrible job at shutting up ever since Pariah had done something to it yesterday.

But he was on tenuous ground with Cross, and he wanted the humans to move anyway, so he held his tongue as the braver citizens lost their courage and backed off.

The rest of the team was fiddling with their ocular scopes, looking around the tops of the buildings. Probably expecting to find the target in plain sight.

Mercer frowned, looking back at the helicopter. Something was off, out of the ordinary – some sense reporting a minute anomaly that he just couldn't place. He opened his mouth to ask Cross if something was up, then closed it again; if he couldn't pinpoint something, he doubted a human would have even been able to detect it – even an augmented one like Cross. The man was still busy with ordering off the civilians anyway.

The ground trembled.

Instinct was quicker than tangible senses, and Alex leapt back a moment before he knew what was going on. Asphalt and dust flew up in a gritty geyser as a massive red-veined tendril speared through the street, slicing the transport helicopter into pieces of scrap.

It wasn't much of an explosion, the vehicle caving in on itself rather than bursting into fireworks. The combined experiences of numerous unlucky pilots told him that the engine must have escaped being hit. There was a shriek of metal grating against metal, and something else that was distinctly organic. As quickly as it surfaced, the behemoth tentacle – almost like a Hydra, but he couldn't get a good look, it was too fast – retreated underground with a low keen. Several alarmed shouts came from the Wisemen, and a panicked wail rose up around the street like a chorus of the damned, but as far as he could tell, nobody had been seriously hurt, as long as they'd all been outside the helicopter.

Then he started burning.

His head snapped down, but there was nothing – no clinging droplets of aviation fuel set alight, no automatic fire. And yet his skin was screaming distress in a jumble of painful signals. Was his neural network malfunctioning? It was unprecedented, but constant disassembly and rebuilding of his body from the cells up probably allowed for a few minor glitches…

Then he realized. The helicopter's engine was unharmed, but the Bloodtox canisters stowed away had not been so lucky; at least one of them had burst, freeing its contents in an expanding thin cloud of pale red.

_Oh, fuck._ Blackwatch's new and improved toxin, evaporating into a densely concentrated miasma only a few meters away. Without thinking, he drew in a sharp inhale.

Breathing was a mistake – a habitual, instinctive, and probably unnecessary action that ended up being a lot more trouble than it was worth. The biomass around his chest began to flare with a stinging ache as the toxin worked on his lungs.

His attempts at infuriated swearing were lost in a series of chokes as he sprang up, all instinct and logical thought balled up into the sole desire of _getawayfromthatshit_! He bounded across the street in two jumps, ignoring the screaming pedestrians beneath him. It was a miracle that none of them were trampled, because chariness had a time and place, and this most certainly did not qualify.

He came to a stop a block and a half away, where the only traces of the poisonous cloud were particles that clung painfully to his unprotected surface.

Alex coughed, swearing vigorously. His skin felt like it was burning; doused in oil and then set aflame. When the pain faded – far too slowly – he saw that it left raw-looking weals on his skin and clothing, pinkish and ragged. With an angry grunt, he shed the dead flesh and let it fall to dust on the breeze.

While he was altering his forms… those tentacles. Pariah had to be nearby. He transformed his right arm into his preferred scimitar-styled blade; he needed both power and maneuverability for the fight ahead. Possibly even more.

Footsteps behind him prompted an instinctive snarl, but a whirl around informed him that it was just Cross catching up with him, grenade launcher at the ready.

"Mercer. You okay?"

The viral monster coughed up another gob of necrotic tissue in response. "I think your 'alterations' worked," he gasped, making air quotes with the hand that was still distinctly hand-shaped. "Don't think it's going to help now, though."

"I noticed." Under his breath, Cross was reciting a list of curse words. Everything in the transport was probably lost, including their way out. And _fuck_, had Forsey ever gotten out of the cockpit? If he hadn't, he had little doubt he'd just lost the one of the most skilled pilots he'd ever found, alongside one of the few that was loyal to him over Blackwatch as a whole. _Focus, focus _– what resources he have left? He didn't have time to dwell on the losses. "Are you hurt?"

Alex frowned – the pain was receding, but not entirely negated, and he could still feel the toxin burning where his lungs might have been. He shifted his biomass again, forcing all of the blackened, dying parts to surface and fall off as so much shed skin. "I'm good. Not much contact."

"Captain!" Winder called, running up; a few of the squad members were on his heels. "All of the canisters are shot, there's nothing left!"

Cross's stream of vulgarities renewed itself. He'd been expecting as much, but it was extremely unhelpful to have it confirmed that his biggest tool against Pariah was completely lost. He was going to have to count on Zeus now, as much as he hated to admit it… and that was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

"He was aiming for them," Alex muttered. "Smart kid. How the hell did he know those were there…?"

The rest of the team had arrived – at the very least, they weren't panicking. "Fuckin' hell, I can't see him!" one of the Wisemen yelled.

Nor could Alex – residual pain and anxiety made excellent distractions, and Pariah was a small target anyways. If he was even in plain sight at all. But Zeus did have other means…

He growled – this was dangerous ground, here, tapping into any semblance of the hivemind when he knew he was so vulnerable through it, but he couldn't waste any time searching around with normal eyes. He grimaced and braced himself – he wasn't sure what he was expecting – and let his mind connect to the collective, washing the world in tones of hazy red.

But there was silence in the hivemind, resounding silence. He'd learned how to mute out the calls and cries of the dying when he used this venue to hunt, but they were always there. This complete lack of sound was unnatural. Something was wrong.

A high, clear voice cut through the silence, slightly amused. _I thought you might want to concentrate._

Alex tensed; around him, the whitish silhouettes of Cross's soldiers reacted with alarm, but he wasn't sparing them a modicum of attention. That was definitely Pariah speaking, _playing_ with him, _again_; his head whipped frantically from side to side as he tried to pinpoint the child. But the voice seemed to echo from all directions, a smothering, godly presence with no localized station.

_There!_ Through the crimson smog, a point of brilliant white hovered at the top corner of his vision. He tilted his head up, snapping the connection to the hive and letting the city's natural colors replace the eerie spectrum. About a block away, he could see a small figure kneeling atop a factory, clearly looking at him.

"There he is!" Alex shouted over to Cross. All right, that was enough help for the Wiseman team – he had work to do, and they would only get in his way. He sprang towards the child without bothering to see what the Wisemen were doing, windows shattering under his feet as he hurled himself skyward. He leapt from building to building in a dance of broken glass and cracked walls, gathering up his velocity and crossing a series of rooftops in a blur.

Pariah's perch was a good few stories higher than the rest of the roofs, but a single jump cleared that distance. All thoughts of subtlety or caution were abandoned – this was the hunt and the kill, he could see his prey, and it was going to _die_. A feral cry broke from his throat as he pulled his blade back like a guillotine, ready to rend him in twain –

What happened next was dizzying and draining. Pariah took that awakened primal facet of his mind and _pulled_, sending Mercer sprawling as he crushed aggression under a choking shroud of viral domination – something that every part of Blacklight understood, barring its conscious mind.

But Mercer was angrier than he'd expected, or perhaps just more prepared – with a roar, he clambered back to his feet, swinging at Pariah and connecting with what was definitely a Hydra. The towering Infected had shot up between the two moments before Alex's attack. It was thinner than the ones he'd remembered, and its skin was slicker, tougher, and had less purchase, but these observations were hardly noted in his frenzy. He just wanted it _dead, _fuck the specifics. He hacked away at the offending tentacle, managing to slice a few deep cuts in its thick surface before its stories-high bulk bore down on him and slammed him to the concrete.

He struggled, tearing more wounds into the feverishly warm flesh even as the marks of his earlier attacks healed over. But the Hydra was more versatile than the ones he'd had experience with; more tentacles branched from its base, pinioning him like a straightjacket and forcing him to stop slashing lest he tear into himself.

The oversized tendril was blocking his sight, but he could sense that the child had taken a few unconcerned steps toward him.

"You're harder to control than the others," Pariah noted. "You're different. Not quite as close to our family. But I always knew you would be, Zeus. We were born. You were _created_."

"And we're all unnatural as fuck," he spat back. "But if any of us are going to exist, I'd rather it be me and me alone."

"Unnatural?" Pariah paused. "Is that really what you think of us?"

The next thing he knew, he was flying – not the carefully controlled glide that he oft traversed the city with, but an out-of-control, head over heels tumble as the Hydra rocked back and flung him down. Mad spinning prevented him from seeing or feeling any useful sensation from the surrounding air. He spread out his arms to try and gain sway over his fall, inopportunely done so a moment before he hit the asphalt. The semblance of bones in each limb snapped, alongside something at the top of his spine; the snaps and crunches of his failing skeleton lost in the greater clamor of the breaking street. No matter. To him, the damage was inconvenient but purely superficial.

He took a moment to fix his broken neck and leapt back to his feet. The Hydra was leaning down like a massive, headless lindwyrm, a small figure perched on its top. Alex watched warily as it curled in on itself, coiling and swerving in a fluid descent to ground level.

Pariah tumbled gracefully to the street, upright and alert; its services no longer required, the Hydra vanished into the ground with a clatter of metal, the factory's side sagging dangerously.

For a moment, the two simply stared, sizing each other up and waiting for their opponent to make the first move.

"Perhaps, in a sense, you are right," came Pariah's soft voice, breaking the sudden silence. "Perhaps we were not. My roots are far closer to naturally occurring than yours, of course… but I can see how you would draw that conclusion. In other ways, though, you and I have more in kind than we do with any of our brethren. Neither of us was ever human – the virus took a human template, but when we first awoke, we were as we are now. We are, in a sense, pure."

Mercer found himself listening despite himself.

"But if we are unnatural… humanity created us, did they not? They took a natural organism and tailored it to their own ends. And upon seeing what it could do, they tinkered further. They wanted us to exist, and here we are."

"Humanity had no idea what the fuck it was doing," Alex grated, waving a hand towards the destroyed building and the sounds of panic in the distance. "They played god with things they didn't understand. Now they're reaping the results. They might be a pack of idiots, but I don't think they wanted _this_."

"This isn't what I want to create," Pariah clarified smoothly. "If humanity is 'a pack of idiots', as you say… should we not grant them a higher existence? Cure their woes. All bound in Family, all as one. This is… conflict. Transition. The precipice between chaos and utopia. Were you to cooperate, we might bridge that gap more seamlessly."

Alex's response was not appropriate for children in any sense of the word.

"I really do want what's best." The child's eyebrows pinched together in a perplexed frown. "I don't understand why you can't see it. You _want_ to see it, but you won't."

"You know nothing about what I want," he growled, voice low and guttural. "Nothing."

"On the contrary," and his voice was contrary too, childish falsetto high and clear against Mercer's gravelly rumble, "I know plenty. Perhaps even better than you do. Or at least what you'd like to admit, hm?"

The distant but growing tramp of armored boots reached his ears – the Wisemen were finally catching up. Pariah heard this too, and his head turned, curious; the iron grip on Alex's mind slackened, and he lunged for the kid's throat.

His body locked down moments later, only a foot or so closer to Pariah than he'd started. The child was eyeing him again, clearly deciding that the now-in-sight Blackwatch soldiers didn't merit any considerable threat.

"Must you always do that when I'm not looking?" he sighed to Alex. "It's awfully tiresome."

And out of his jurisdiction, tentacles slithered across his blade. He watched in horror as it melted back into a useless human arm.

Mercer fought harder, trying to claw through the connection and wrest control of himself again, but the viselike grip on his mind only tightened until it was a struggle to breathe, let alone anything else. He gritted his teeth and glared, as though he could tear off that stupid smile through willpower alone.

But nothing happened; he couldn't move. A breeze ruffled the child's curly hair. He looked so innocent, so normal, it was almost absurd to consider how dangerous he was… Except he didn't look quite normal, did he? For the first time, Alex registered Pariah's eyes. They glowed a bright and unearthly violet.

"What the fuck do you want with me?" he grated, forcing the words out from lips that would hardly move. "Why are you doing this?"

"I really have nothing against you, Zeus." Pariah smiled angelically up at him. "But you took my mother, see. And I would really like her back."

There was a single moment of stillness. Something like a phantom heartbeat thumped once in Alex's chest.

Then he crumpled to his knees, one hand clutching at his midsection. The constant shifting of biomass within had changed – no longer naturally balancing itself in an equilibrium he only recognized upon its loss. It was sickening and disorienting and _wrong_, like he could finally _feel_ the constant visceral writhe and churn within now that it wasn't following an automatic rhythm. Something else was dictating it now, pulling it into a tight, growing core in his center. It was hot and uncomfortable verging on pain – no, definitely pain now – and he suffered a rapidly intensifying feeling of anemia and sickness as it drew biomass away from its stations. He recoiled, reeling from this new and alien threat, and struggled to force his mass to obey, to reform – but it had spun entirely out of his control, undulating madly inside him.

His gut clenched and his insides writhed, forcing him down as his body rebelled against him. Breath heaved in and out of him in rapid pants, even as changes warped and hollowed the throat and lungs to receive them.

The voices were bubbling up too, those ever-suppressed legions of whispers surging up in a roiling sea of tormented cries, the dying screams of the damned. Something was stirring up those silenced ghosts, dredging through and tossing aside their ceased existences in a search for… what? Him? Alex couldn't even tell what constituted himself anymore. There was a woman sobbing as something black and terrible seized her by the throat. A park, a warm summer breeze. Snow angels. "Hold the line!" an officer barked. Screaming; ruined streets under a distorted, hazy sky, all a part of a hellscape he knew far too well. A hospital bed. Somebody dying. The bright grey eyes of a newborn child. Fiery explosions in a dark sky – strange ones, colorful and shaped like rings and starbursts, and the onlookers laughed and clapped at their thunder rather than fleeing with panicked screams.

"We are Blackwatch!" And he had to be, because he could feel them, see out of so many pairs of eyes and helmets and scopes and _lives_. Everything they felt, every crime they committed – as unprotected as his mind currently was, he experienced every flicker of emotion, every alien sentiment he had made a herculean effort to suppress. Whose actions were they now, his or theirs, if they were him and he was forced to completely understand why they'd done every atrocity and hate them for it simultaneously? But there was more than just Blackwatch there – masses of others with varying levels of innocence, and somewhere beneath them and in front of them and currently being shaken to pieces was the contrived mind of a viral construct that called itself Alex Mercer.

"We are the last line of defense!" They'd done little to protect those others, though, because Marines and scientists and doctors and teachers and housewives and policemen and _people_ all had their final resting place within him too. But they still clung to that notion even in death. The incoherent, abject terror of some shrilled sharply in his ears, but other soldiers had held onto that unshakable belief that they were _right_ as they died – that they were a part of something greater, and that others would rise up and succeed where they failed. Now they _were_ a part of something greater – the very same thing they'd all died to stop, the same thing that not a single one of their kin had managed to triumph over afterwards. And he was wrong and they were right, but they were him and he was them, or they were part of him and he alone was nobody at all.

_Now_ he was falling. Drained of biomass, his outward body was starting to lose its cohesion; where his basest, most automatic concentration failed, patches of artificial skin and cloth denatured into a thin veneer of struggling, churning tentacles.

"Nothing crosses the red line!"

But they _were_, and no guardian could stop it – a deluge of Infected tearing through the wall of Marines and the bridge to the world beyond, weathering the artillery from above, pouring over their fallen as a single entity bent on breaking free of its constraints. There were ghosts too, straining against thick tentacles that bound them inside; chains that shattered and snapped in a whirl of images and sound, a kaleidoscope of _lives_. So many lives. What was his own parody of a half-existence, to think it could weather the onslaught of a thousand?

If there was a line to hold, he wasn't sure where it was anymore.

He was paralyzed with something like nausea, but none of his madly spinning memories recalled anything as debilitating, as _consuming,_ as this. It was the parasite all over again, his first breaths of Bloodtox, pulling himself back together from bits of desiccated biomass and an unfortunate crow, all rolled up into one and magnified a thousand times. It felt like dying.

It was too much. He lifted his head to scream, but the sound was lost somewhere in the base of his throat, meeting churning organic slop and gurgling through in a broken cry. It was like some sort of signal; his back arched violently, the contortion snapping his redundant but nevertheless formed human vertebrae in a series of sickening cracks as an outside force pulled his body halfway upright. The core was churning, boiling up and tearing everything from him and what _was _this and he wasn't sure he wanted to survive if this sort of hell could exist. He choked; something red and coppery but far too thick to be blood frothed at his lips.

His tongue flicked out desperately to catch the spray, suddenly and inexplicably _hungry_, but he only had a moment to suffer the sensation before another, more powerful ailment surged into him with the force of a crashing tsunami. Illness was not a natural occurrence for the Blacklight virus – just as he was an apex predator, the substance that coursed through his infected body was the pinnacle of its order, subjugating and destroying all lesser pathogens to touch it with ease. As such, he had no frame of reference other than now-incoherent memories when his breath was lost entirely and that boiling core erupted through his throat.

He retched once, and then all movement was beyond him. The stolen mass had a life of its own, tearing up and through him in a desperate bid to escape – and he was too weak to resist it, overpowered instantly. It poured out of his mouth like blackish, congealed blood, not in waves but as a single unbroken stream, sustained far beyond what any body of his size should have been able to contain.

Weakly, he tried to recoil, to fall, to make it _stop_. But the stream held him up, pulling the rest of his body with it as it forced its way free.

It tore through him for what had to be an eternity before he was able to draw breath again in a few choked stutters. They came up red and black, flecked with biomass.

And then there was nothing left to support him, nothing left inside, and he was falling, crashing hundreds of miles down to the pavement below. Breaking with nothing else left to hold onto, a hollowed-out shell of a shell of a man.

Moments before his head struck the asphalt with a resounding crack, his hazy eyes caught… something. A figure rising up from the biomass he'd had so violently torn out of him.

It looked like… a woman. A girl of barely twenty, with patchy spikes of auburn hair, clothed in a dull brown wetsuit that shone oddly in the failing light…

And then, mercifully, he felt no more.


	8. To Cross That Line, Part 1

It did not take a genius to realize that Cross's operation had taken a distinct turn for the worse.

It was one thing to lose all of your gear to face down one of the most fearsome adversaries you knew. It was another to watch the _other_ foe on the top of your 'fearsome' list crumple at your new enemy's feet, choking up his insides as a horrible bloody slop.

It was another still to look away from the falling body of your foe-turned-ally and realize that said slop was _moving. Rising. _Squirming and wriggling and forming itself into a figure that Cross recognized with a paroxysm of abject horror.

Pariah wasn't paying any attention to the captain or his men, nor did he cast a glance towards his fallen opponent. His eyes were fixed on the rising form of what was clearly Elizabeth Greene.

Cross couldn't even find the energy to swear. He just stared with wide eyes, for once entirely wordless.

He hadn't thought Alex Mercer was even capable of feeling pain, but the shrill, continuous wounded-animal cry that had issued from the virus-thing's throat told otherwise – and that was before he started writhing, tearing at the asphalt with his bare hands. And _that_ was before he had started coughing up a veritable river of blood.

But now that disturbingly high-pitched keen had fallen silent – Zeus was motionless and silent on the ground, sprawled out bonelessly and tossed aside like used goods.

And in front of his body rose the greater evil he'd vanquished; every strand of freed biomass writhing towards her now fully-formed feet and vanishing into the whole of codename Mother. There was no doubt it was her; he'd seen more than enough case files and pictures of Greene to see the complete, undeniable resemblance, and Pariah's chillingly sweet words to Zeus more or less proved it.

Elizabeth Greene, the first Runner and the mother of Redlight, was back.

Cross made a mental note to _never_ assume a situation couldn't get any worse again.

_Don't shoot_, he motioned to his soldiers. There was some scattered hesitation, but none of them would disobey him. He wasn't a fool – attacking Pariah and Elizabeth Greene with nothing more than standard weaponry was utter suicide, and right now the two were at least distracted. His team's lives were worth more than that, and he wasn't going to attract their attention unless he had to. Nods acknowledged the order, but none of them holstered their guns.

Greene's eyes were wide in wonderment. She had dropped to a kneeling position, her face level with the small figure before her. Tentatively, dazedly, she reached down to stroke the child's cheek.

It was hard to make out anything through her desiccated rasp, but Cross thought he heard the words, "My son."

An equally dazed smile split her baby's face. "Mother…"

Not a codename this time, but a title, spoken in reverence.

With a disturbingly human cry, she scooped up Pariah and held him tightly against her chest, rocking him back and forth like a real mother would her child. She nuzzled his forehead with her cheek, whispering something in his ear.

They looked like perfect targets, distracted and in clear range, but Cross's order was law; nobody was going to shoot. After seeing what had become of Mercer, no man among the team entertained the notion that Greene or Pariah were foes that could be felled by the standard-issue weapons they carried. Duty called for them to fight, but duty was blind. There was a sort of immortality to Mother and her son now, the same sense of invincibility that surrounded Zeus - Zeus, who Pariah had turned into a half-dead mess without as much as _touching_ him.

Even so, as a minute dragged by, Cross started to reconsider. Stopping the Infection was his _job_, damn it; he was letting fear cloud the best opportunity he was liable to get. He was immune to the Infection, he had been able to hold his own against Mercer better than anyone else had; if he was the only one who _could_ act, then acting was his responsibility by proxy. He didn't want to die, but that was a reservation you weren't allowed to have in Blackwatch. Death was expected; you just had to be good enough, and you'd manage to keep out of its way. For the third time in many years, he questioned his continuing ability to do so.

Before he could decide, Greene finally stood up. He tensed, lifting his mounted launcher. This was it, he was certain; the hive queen was going to attack, and the outcome was torturously clear.

At her side, Pariah looked directly at him and flashed him a brilliant smile.

What happened next made everyone jump a few steps back. There was no telltale rumble to precede the swarm of tentacles that erupted from the ground with a roar of shattering pavement. They were not quite Hydras, lacking the distinct bony heads; just thick, fleshy constructs of ghastly reddish orange that entirely blocked out the two figures they ringed. One of them surfaced almost directly under the still form of Mercer, and he was flung skyward a few meters closer to the Wisemen team. More distinctly bonelike snaps resounded as the abused body hit the ground again, but Zeus did not stir.

The tendrils thrashed outwards as one; the street heaved and buckled as if struck by an earthquake, powerful enough to send some of the Wisemen to their knees in a struggle for balance. A forceful spray of shattered cement and grit blinded the rest, scratching up and blocking their scopes and leaving the entire team no other option than to buckle down and outlast the strengthening unnatural seismic activity.

And they did – the shower of rubble reached a crescendo and abruptly halted. Cross, the first to snap back to his feet, witnessed the fleshy abominations dive back into the wrecked street. When the curtain of tentacles vanished, so had the mother and son; all that was left was a gaping hole to the city's subway system.

The captain was a brave man, but right now, there was no way in hell he was following them.

He blinked. So… what? What the hell? Greene had been resurrected from her killer's body, and she had just spent some quality time with her kid, then up and left? To recuperate? To spread? Probably both. It was sort of hard to believe he was still alive.

That was… fortuitous, if anything could be considered lucky right now, but if the most twisted mother-child pair known to mankind was going to ignore them, he wasn't going to complain.

Reality backhanded him. Oh god. Lucky? Forsey was dead. Mercer – fucking _Zeus_, unstoppable Zeus – was a ragdoll on the pavement. Pariah had escaped. Elizabeth Greene was back.

Hell, getting killed probably would have been the luckiest option possible.

"Captain…" That was Detwiller, voice lower and more uncertain than he'd ever heard out of the lieutenant.

Cross just shrugged. "We're fucked." There was no other true answer at this point, and he was pretty sure he knew the question.

On his other side, a harsh laugh crackled through Winder's filters, a laugh Cross had heard once before – right after their centuries-ago fight with Alex Mercer, when most of his team laid eviscerated at his feet. It was the sort of laugh you laughed when you were pushed right up to your breaking point, and you laughed simply because you could recognize the world was playing one titanic joke on you.

But now Mercer was the one that was at his feet, _most_ of his men were still alive, and it still felt like the joke was nastier this time around.

Maybe he realized that there was nothing to stop it. He hadn't been able to stop Blacklight, but they'd been wrong about Blacklight to begin with. It wasn't the virus that needed stopping; Redlight was the real enemy there. Pariah, Greene – there was no mistaking whose side they were on, or what they wanted.

He glanced over at the prone Zeus. He didn't even seem to be breathing. Cross doubted he was dead, but he was probably closer to it than anyone had ever witnessed.

What the hell was he supposed to do with him?

Moving him was out of the question – even if they could lift an entirely unconscious Zeus, there was no way in hell they'd be able to get him anywhere without getting spotted by Blackwatch street patrols. Mercer wasn't going to be donning any disguises anytime soon. And where was he supposed to take him? A base? Some random civilian's house? The options were laughable. Dana's apartment was pretty far away; again, simply not an option if he didn't want to be noticed.

And he didn't like the look of Zeus's body, which was softly shivering, slowly denaturing and reforming patches of itself from tentacles to skin in a weird, eldritch cycle. He knew very little about how Blacklight worked, but it looked distinctly unsafe to touch.

But why was trying to relocate Mercer the first plan to come to mind anyways? The walking weapon of mass destruction was _far_ from his responsibility. If anything, he was his responsibility to _capture and turn in_.

Which… given all of the suspicious behavior he could possibly be connected to in recent history, sounded like an extremely useful way to secure himself some credit. An alias, something to hold up against his recent and perceivably dodgy actions. Especially when the alternative was a situation he had no way of ameliorating. If he was caught helping Zeus in any way, he'd be executed as a traitor to the country. He wasn't going to reform Blackwatch if he ended up cremated alongside the rest of the Redlight-exposed corpses. The more thought he lent it, the more certain he became that turning in Zeus wasn't just an option; it was a necessity.

Regardless, he paused, hesitating where a lesser man in his situation would have gone forward without question. Alex Mercer was no friend of his, nor was he much of an ally. Both found it useful to do favors for each other for the express purpose of making the other owe them a favor in turn, but the personification of the Blacklight virus was not something he'd want protecting his back in a fight. Mercer was just… naïve. An immeasurably powerful and single-minded entity that had chosen, both foolishly and against all odds, to _trust_ him. That was what grated at Cross harder than anything else; for the entirety of his long time in service, he'd worked to earn the trust that others placed in him. Only now did he realize that he held Zeus's confidence as well, just in time to complicate what he had to do with him. It seemed _wrong_ – after what he'd seen, he had no doubt that Mercer had never been on the Infection's side – but what other choice did he have? Best to salvage what he could and strengthen his image of loyalty to Blackwatch.

It didn't matter anyway. Blackwatch was going to come to the site, and quickly; he could either appear like he was in control and aware of the situation, or he could try to explain himself out of a six-foot hole.

It felt a lot more like betrayal than it had any right to.

He sighed and pulled out his comm. That was Blackwatch for you. Best not to get too invested with the people in this line of work… Not that Alex Mercer was exactly _people _anymore, but lying half-dead and helpless on the street, he looked a lot closer to that subtle line than usual.

Strangely – _treacherously _– he found himself half-hoping that the Blacklight virus found a way out. As horribly as everything had gone, he didn't want to imagine how they were going to face Greene _again_, much less Pariah, without Mercer's wildcard help.

"Red Crown? It's a long fuckin' story, but before you do anything, prepare the containment teams? We've got Zeus down… and a lot more to cover. A_ lot _lot."

0o0o0

With Blackwatch, everything was very efficient. And punctual.

Five minutes later, the Wiseman team was directed to an extraction point.

After ten minutes, a transport touched down and took them back.

Fifteen minutes later, the trucks arrived.

Soldiers clad in matte black poured out of the vehicles, some hoisting specialized equipment, bearing satchels full of vials, or assorted weaponry. Near-constant drills in preparation for this moment guided their every move with a regimented, mechanical hand. Frightened stragglers from earlier crowds were chased off with threatening gestures as the containment team got to work. The containment battalion split up into their respective duties with haste. A reinforced, person-sized cylinder was carried out by a trio of bulky men, set down and fiddled with; others held small detectors and swept the street for trace samples.

Blackwatch tolerated no fear, no breaking rank, but a pall of apprehension descended nonetheless when it came time to retrieve the target. Zeus was legendary and horrific - nobody would ever think to question that Zeus had been named after a god. They'd all heard the stories. They'd all seen the footage. And even now, as a broken thing sprawled out on the pavement, it seemed liable to leap up and tear out their throats.

But even if every man behind the mask secretly feared for his life, their personas showed no more hesitation than a faltering step here or there, a belying flinch or nervous twitch. Nothing more would be permitted, even from one rather short soldier who had a thicker, more stylized raiment than the rest; one who, if he had worn a visible face, would have looked like he'd rather be doing _anything_ else.

Tightly holding a syringe of tranquilizer, just in case, the man cautiously picked his way over to the fallen target. It seemed helpless, utterly unaware. He waved a hand in front of its face, to no reaction.

He steeled himself. _It's unconscious, it's unconscious. It can't hurt me._

He touched it, and a monster stirred.

0o0o0

Alex woke up with what was reminiscent of the worst hangover_ ever_.

Awakening wasn't a common experience for him, given that it had the general prerequisite of _sleep_, or at least unconsciousness, and that was something he seldom indulged in. But regardless, it seemed strange to him that he should wake up to find himself already standing.

Not just that, but he was halfway into a hunter's crouch. Held a distance from his sides, his arms were wiry with spiked tendrils of biomass and ended in cruel metallic talons. The edges glistened with blood. Tantalizing.

It was something he could have appreciated if he didn't feel like his entire frame was on fire. It was agony enough to make him double over for a few seconds as he struggled to process it. The pain wasn't localized – every inch of his body, every last assimilated and virally hijacked cell, felt like it had taken a trip through a meat blender set on 'puree'.

And he was hungry. Oh god he was hungry.

It was a hunger like he'd only felt twice before, in lesser extents – his flight from Gentek's morgue, then unrecognized for what it was, and then awakening after being utterly ravaged by a nuclear explosion. But this ravening voracity managed to be greater than both experiences, possibly even combined; screaming, out-of-control emptiness, and his density was all wrong and it hurt like nauseous hell, and he could hear breath and feel warmth and he didn't need his senses to know that there were living bodies _right there _and he had never craved anything as desperately as he did that prone mass.

Only half-seeing, he staggered over to the nearest body, a bleeding, torn figure that had his tendrils reaching out before he'd even touched it. Already unconscious, the fallen soldier met his death quietly, his end serving to quell an infinitesimal edge of a monster's hunger.

His sense of smell led him to another and a third still; the last seemed to be aware, and wheezed out a terrified plea before he was absorbed into Mercer's biomass. Not enough, not nearly enough. It was maddening, like his insides were on fire, burning through his mass and devouring what little he had left.

He growled in frustration as he kicked at another, feeling no life stir within. Nothing the virus could use and bring into itself, nothing to heal with. No good.

He gave the remains another, stronger kick, sending them tumbling out of his way. Where had all these dead Blackwatch soldiers come from, anyway?

He peered dully at them. The bodies bore deep rents, some torn cleanly in half… and when had he taken his claws out, anyway? He didn't recall shifting himself. Claws… Had he killed them? Why didn't he remember it?

The memories of the recently deceased filled in those gaps quite clearly – Blackwatch intel, Zeus was down and ready to be brought in. They watched as one of grunts reached to drag Mercer forward, and a mass of writhing tentacles seized the man and violently drew him in. From there, a ghastly specter with hollow eyes had awakened, and carnage ensued.

It was vaguely disturbing, but they were Blackwatch and he was starving and all attempts at thinking were lost in a muddled haze of pain. He continued his search through the cadavers, but fewer and fewer of them clung to life enough for him to use. And not all of them were soldiers.

What the hell had happened?

He closed his eyes. The memories of… how long had he been out? An hour, a day? Didn't matter. Whenever the last time his eyes had been open had happened, the events that constituted it came rushing to him.

Greene. Greene was back.

_Fuck_.

Mercifully, his mind was just not ready to deal with this abject realization. It really could not have cared less about what dawning woes were about to be unleashed upon the world; it wanted food. Immediately. Alex was content enough to just accept the fact and hold off actually _thinking_ about the connotations of what had just happened for later. He had a feeling that it was going to be another of those mind-breaking '_what the fuck have I done'_ ones, probably laden with crushing guilt, furious second-guessing, and serious considerations of his own mortality. He really didn't have the fortitude to deal with that right now.

He knew he had to warn Dana… but no, he thought, feeling his flesh shifting and pulling and needing to _feed_. There was no way he could return to his sister in this state, not when he was a hair's breadth from snapping and consuming everything in a mile's radius simply because it existed.

His body was tense, the set of his shoulders rigid, every muscle coiled like hyper-compressed springs. Ignoring the desire to consume was hell. There was really no other word for it.

People. People everywhere. If he closed his eyes and let his awareness range out, he could _feel_ the wandering masses - vibrations of distant footsteps, wisps of heat and soft exhales. The city teemed with life; soft, defenseless creatures, meat for the taking. He could feel the world around him, beyond this empty death-strewn street; through some mixture of senses so subtle he could barely tell them apart, he tracked the motion of the endless masses through movements as subtle as dewdrops sliding along a spider's web. Yes, it was exactly like a web, and he stood at the center, a myriad clear paths connecting him to each individual prey creature. And he could feel all of them - hundreds, slow and aimless, without a clue they were being hunted. It was tantalizing. He'd never felt so much a… a _predator_ before. Above the world.

There were so many of them – who would miss a few dozen, a few hundred? The human race had no issues with repopulating itself. He only needed to take a few running bounds and let his instincts do all of the work. It would be so easy…

But Dana would know. She always did. Somehow, she'd find a video or hear a story… and really, even if she didn't, what would that make him? If he was going to change himself for her - and he _was, _because that was the _least_ she deserved - he wasn't going to half-ass things. He wasn't an idiot; new voices and fallen bodies indicated that a number of civilians had been caught in his unconscious rampage – but that was out of his jurisdiction and felt detached in the same way that the human Alex Mercer's final, omnicidal crime was detached from him. Now, he had a choice, no matter how goddamn hard it was to turn away from what he wanted. That had never bothered him before, not on anything more than a superficial level… but now, it felt like a personal betrayal to her. Maybe it was. Why did it matter, especially now? He was grievously hurt. Survival came before ethics. It had always been simple – it _should_ have been simple.

Maybe it was because he had a choice? He closed his eyes momentarily, shaking his head in disbelief.

_God_, this conscience shit had _horrible_ timing.

But he didn't think he could manage to just calmly walk through the streets to the nearest hive. The second anyone brushed up against him, he'd snap. That much was beyond a doubt. He'd feed, the civilians around him would panic and try to flee, and he wouldn't be able to stop himself from there.

His gaze wandered upwards. The rooftops were his escape. They always were.

He leapt up and scaled a warehouse's height before he could change his mind; from there, he sprang to the higher factory that was next to it. Here, the thickly concentrated pollutants blotted out the people below and let him relax, just a little. He could only pick out smells he was actually searching for, and that was a godsend. He only distinguished the much-craved presence of prey when he let himself range out too far, all of those swarming bodies below –

He ran.

No more waiting. He didn't think he could hold back for another minute. His promises to Dana floated in and out of tune in his mind like a damaged record – so many bodies on the streets below, so much warmth, just ready to be converted into the sustenance he so desperately needed, and he was just trying to shelve them out of his mind. It was laughable. He was beyond understanding why he cared at this point – all he could remember was that he _should_ care, dimly, and that he'd regret it later on if he lost himself. But at least they were farther away now, and the air that rushed across his cheeks and tousled his hood was constantly changing and bitter with the sting of high-speed wind. _Soon_, he told himself, _soon._ That ravenous, self-assuring litany blotted out thousands of perfectly edible pedestrians as he crashed across a series of rooftops, following the trail of rot and blood that invariably led to a red zone.

The seconds fled by with merciful alacrity, time failing to carve much meaning into his half-conscious perception. He was only aware of when the air grew thick with unnatural decay and resounded with the shrieks of the panicked masses, all slated for death for being stupid enough to linger in an infected area and he would really just be making it quick for them – but he'd come this far. And he'd given Dana his word.

_Soon._

And then the hive itself was in sight; two blocks away, one block, then a single rooftop with crumbling scaffolding. It probably used to be a supermarket before it was consumed by Redlight's corruption, but none of that registered. His sole focus was for the hordes of beasts that surrounded it. So many bodies, mindless and overgrown, all perfect vectors; endless meat for Blacklight to convert and replicate, and he _needed_ it with an intensity he couldn't even begin to express beyond the singular act of indulging.

_Now._

He launched himself from the periphery with a feral scream, landing in the midst of the aimless, warped bodies that turned to acknowledge him with only a pale shadow of his own hunger.

And for a time, he knew nothing but flesh.

0o0o0

About an hour later, he found himself shimmying down Liberty Terrace's elevator shaft.

Reaching the closed doors for the sixth floor, he quickly let himself denature into what could best be described as primordial goo, then slithered through the cracks. When all of his mass was pulled through and located in the thankfully empty hallway, he reformed his body just as rapidly. It felt fairly unpleasant, but more tolerable than going to ground level and coming in through the lobby.

Tentacles writhed across his newly recreated skin for just a second longer than usual, an unwelcome reminder that they were not ready to go dormant.

In truth, it unsettled him. Yes, he'd been literally hollowed out. That was going to leave its mark. But he'd feasted on an entire Blackwatch battalion and the contents of a hive, and the hunger _still_ gnawed at him, somewhat pacified but far from settled. The act itself was foggy in his mind, but new memories and mass swirled within him, lending undeniable proof to what he already could have guessed; dozens. He knew he had accumulated more than that many bodies' worth of biomass over his admittedly short lifetime, and he had lost a large portion of it with Greene's creation, but to need to replace everything he'd been stripped of all at once brought the scope of it painfully to light; that something had changed over time, that what had been enough for him once was woefully inadequate now. It hadn't been like this after the nuclear explosion, where he'd been reduced to nearly nothing… how much was he expected to _feed_?

The worst part was, the only explanation he could think of was that he'd done this to himself - that in constantly fighting, consuming, growing, he'd evolved into what he was now. He was far stronger than what he'd started out as, and he needed more to maintain that strength, the limits to which he could push himself. Evolution was his nature; he _couldn't_ revert. The nuke, Greene, he'd been driven out of his _mind _with hunger until he'd gotten himself back up to strength. He wasn't going to regret it - he'd never have survived the first Outbreak otherwise - but after all of this bullshit with Pariah was over, after he ground Redlight under his foot and burned the remains, he didn't know what he was going to do.

But he had other problems to deal with, he acknowledged, rubbing his forehead offhandedly. He was at least in control now, and that was enough. Dana needed to be warned, and that was something that didn't require him to be in any better shape than being able to touch somebody without eating them.

He knocked gently on the door before entering his shared apartment, a rarity for him.

As usual, Dana was at her computer, looking considerably more haggard than she had when he'd last seen her this morning. Her skin looked waxy in the glow of whatever webpage she was poring over, and faint bruises looped two semicircles under her eyes; the beginnings of a mirror image of the omnipresent shadows cast on her brother's face. She'd forgotten to gel her hair, too, and most of the normally perky spikes fell in droopy, mismatched disarray, some stuffed hastily behind her ears so as to not hang over her eyes.

"Dana, I think you need some sleep," he suggested, sourly remembering flickers of the original Doctor Mercer's unbroken nights of research; the template for his own corpselike complexion. Being recreated as a walking disease had probably exacerbated that problem, but it didn't change the fact that his sister wasn't looking after herself enough. "You aren't looking too good."

She snorted. "Fuck you, Alex, at least I don't always look like some kind of sickly meth addict that's never heard of a change in clothes-" It must have registered to her that her words were even more apt than they usually would have been, because she broke off, peering at him more closely. Her voice took on a distinctly concerned note. "Alex, you look _terrible._"

Was it really that visible? He shrugged. He was too tired to care.

Her brow creased further at his lack of rebuttal. "Did something happen?"

He took his place on the sofa, and she abandoned her research in progress, making her way over to her armchair in response; the setup was almost ritualistic for when a conversation was underway.

"Yeah, it did," he admitted. "And now things are a lot worse."

"Worse… You know what, I'm not even fucking surprised anymore." She fixed him with a disapproving look. "All right, spill. What went on today? I thought Cross had a plan?"

"He did. Stuff went wrong. Things got bad. Dana, you have to get out of the city. Right now."

Just as quickly, her mood shifted from concerned to indignant - an area she had far more expertise in. "Yeah, I know, you already gave me that shit yesterday. Don't care. I said _no_." She glowered. "I can take care of myself, you overprotective asshole!"

"Not against this, you can't. It's gotten worse. Dana, please…"

"Quit trying to babysit me, Alex!" she snapped. "You act like I'm made of glass! It used to piss me off so much when you wouldn't fucking acknowledge I existed, but I'm starting to think even that was better than this bullshit!"

She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. The rebuke stung, far deeper than she'd intended for it to, and farther still than she knew. But what was said could not be unsaid, and the pair was left standing just a little bit farther away from each other.

She held her hands up, eyes stricken. "Alex, I-"

"Just listen," her brother said hollowly. "Please. This is a lot more dangerous than it was yesterday. It was bad enough when Pariah escaped, but he's not alone now. It's going to start again. Probably going to be worse this time. I still don't know how to fight Pariah, and as of this afternoon, Elizabeth Greene is back to help him. The city's already infected, there's no incubation period to wait – it's just going to explode. Fast."

"Wait, wait, wait." Dana's fingers clutched at nothing. "The hell? I thought Elizabeth Greene was _dead_! You killed her! What the fuck do you mean, she's back?"

Alex cringed. This was not going to be fun to explain.

"She sort of… came out of me," he tried.

"Elizabeth Greene… came out of you," she repeated, without inflection.

"Yeah."

Her slender fingers, which had been drumming the armrest, fell still. "A dead college-girl-turned-the-Thing, who you apparently ate once, 'came out of you' in a totally undefined manner, apparently leaving both you and her completely intact."

"…Mhm." How else was he supposed to put it?

She closed her eyes for a long moment; when they reopened, there was a dark look to them, one that Alex did not like at all.

"That makes no sense at all." The words, usually exasperated, held an equally biting tone this time. Almost a sense of finality.

"I know. But that's not the point-"

"No." She cut him off. "That _is_ the point. Fess up. Right now."

He flipped his palms up, feeling very confused and undeniably a bit frantic. "About what? What did I do? What should I be confessing?"

"Maybe about how any of this shit is actually _possible_?" she shot back, practically snarling.

"Dana…"

"Alex, what the fuck _happened_ to you?" Dana slammed her fist down on the coffee table, her voice rising to a shriek. "Look, we've both been trying to ignore this for the past few months, just dropping the subject every fucking time I see you in the newspaper, on Youtube – _fuck_, even in this apartment, I can't pretend this is all normal here. It's nice having a brother that can function as any kitchen tool I'm missing, but do you think I don't wonder _how_ you managed to start shapeshifting in the first place? I know you were the science buff, not me, but I'm not entirely retarded, and I don't think I can find a law of physics that you haven't broken. You won't do anything that involves getting close to water. You don't sleep. And I don't even think you can fucking _eat_ anymore, other than this freaky tentacle shit you use to run around doing God-fucking-knows-what to people!" She saw him cringe at that, and pressed on harder, perversely satisfied that she was at least getting to him. "I thought it had something to do with the virus. They say it has something to do with the virus. But I don't believe in coincidence, and I don't see any other goddamn Infected that even remotely resemble you. And I know you lost your memory – alongside whatever the fuck happened – before any of_ that _shit started happening." She inhaled deeply. "Look, I know you've changed. I've wrapped my head around that, sort of. What I need to know is _why_. How did Gentek do this? _What_ did they do?"

He looked away resolutely – it was always like that, wasn't it? The old Alex was defiant as hell and impossible to get a word in over in an argument, but the new model couldn't even look her in the eye. It was a while before he spoke, and the words came slowly and with great effort.

"It's better if you don't know. Trust me."

She closed her eyes, taking in the denial with unsurprised resignation. Of course. "How can I trust you when you clearly don't trust _me_?" she sighed, suddenly quiet.

Alex was silent for a while. When he finally spoke, his voice was low. "I can't expect anyone to trust me. Not after what I've done. Not after what I've become. I guess I'd just hoped that at the very least, _we_ didn't need to think about it. Like we could leave it behind, somehow. Like it was different." He stood up and yanked up the windowsill, making to leave. "See you later."

"I'm going to figure it out eventually," she warned.

He paused, and looked back; the overwhelming, uncharacteristic grief in his silvery eyes shocked her. "I know you will. Always have."

He hesitated just a moment longer. "…Stay safe, Dana."

And with a leap, he was gone.


	9. The Circles of Hell

Alex fled across the rooftops, not caring about the terrified cries that came from the occupied buildings below as his weight rattled their structures. He didn't know where he was going. It didn't matter. All he could comprehend was a horribly_ crushing_ feeling somewhere in his chest, and instinct's way of dealing with that was to get away.

So he ran, blindly.

He could feel that tether breaking as surely as he could feel New York City teetering on the precipice of disaster, that one connection to a remotely stable life – hell, the one thing he _cared_ about – burning away under the friction. He'd always known Dana would end up finding the truth, but it was something he put off, forced himself to ignore, managed to compartmentalize and hide away while he enjoyed his little life of half-truths. He cowered away from it because it was a poison that chewed away at him whenever it wormed its way into his brain, and now it was too close to wash away. Now he could hear the clock ticking down, the deadline approaching like the setting sun he raced towards.

Surprised cries resounded from the street a few stories below; he was nearly deaf to the ambient shock of pedestrians, given that it followed him wherever he went, if he travelled without complete reserve. Were he to look, he'd see faces upturned, fingers pointing. Ordinary humans, catching a glimpse of what had to be the supernatural Zeus that haunted the city like an over-the-top horror movie made real. He couldn't help but resent them a little – their lives were so _simple_. Nobody hunted them or blamed them. They didn't have to struggle to delineate what it was they actually wanted and what belonged solely to the malign instincts of a predator-cross-plague. Nothing more was expected of them than to _live_… and not even that much; when they failed and perished, the world carried on without breaking stride. Many of the individual personas within his accumulated memories had been convinced that their existences were hideously complex, but as one who could look upon humanity through a microscope – or perhaps a kaleidoscope was a better analogy – Alex knew that their lives had been laughably simple. Nothing like his own, just like he shared nothing in common with the creatures below him. Nothing more than faded mannerisms and stolen forms.

Slowly, a destination began to form in his mind – he altered his course across the roofs before consciously realizing he knew where he was going. He swung himself feet-first over a radiator and leapt across the street in a high arc before continuing forward. He had scouted out Harlem down to every shady alleyway when he and Dana had taken up residence there, and he had discovered a small park at the very northwest tip of the island. It was nothing impressive – a few benches, a copse of trees, some of those odd metal implements that were meant for children and tended not to see much use these days. But Alex liked it. It was easier to think there, for no reason he could explain; sorting out his convoluted web of thoughts was a simpler task when he found himself leaning against the familiar smokestack of an apartment across the street, watching the trees rustle and grasses bend. Beyond that, the bay lapped at the piers... It was still Manhattan, still brimming with tides of people and chaotic noise, but at the same time, it was a little different too. A hint of something infinitely more tranquil.

Central Park was different – it was far more grandiose, having had much more effort invested into making it look like a world apart from the surrounding city. He and Dana sometimes went for walks there, when he was sick of lazing around the apartment and she was firm about trying to coax him into doing normal things. The foliage and passably fresh air were a decent enough change, but it was too crowded, too pretentious. The little park he looked down upon did not try to pretend it was anything other than what it was – a quaint and rundown playground that had been carved out of the urban jungle. It wasn't perfect; some of the superfluous recreational structures needed some repairs, and the grounds could have benefitted from a good mow and trim, but that was fine. It wasn't trying to impress anyone – it just _was_.

It was a place he spent some time around, when he'd temporarily burned out his desire to run and he still wasn't ready to return and cage himself inside his apartment. Or when, like now, he had to work something over in his head. Likewise, he knew its every detail down to heart, and the familiar view was clear in his mind's eye before the actual destination was in sight.

And it mirrored the real version, once he crested a taller apartment complex and landed on his familiar, shorter building. Twilight cast long, flickering shadows through the trembling foliage. With dusk rapidly approaching, the crowds were thinner than usual. The park was far from deserted, though. A group of dog-walkers were on the sidewalk up against the water, chatting while their pets barked at each other. A couple was walking through the trees, hand in hand. Closer to the street, somebody was sitting on a bench, head lifted to look up at him.

That in and of itself wasn't weird – benches, being made for sitting, occasionally had people sitting on them. And he didn't like being stared at, but he was used to it – attention was bearable as long as his mood wasn't entirely murderous and nobody was shooting at him. Getting noticed tended to come with being branded as a wanted terrorist and casually displaying what the less informed would consider 'super powers' - it just wasn't worth getting worked up over anymore. But there was something off…

His face, which had somehow softened into a nearly neutral expression at some point, twisted back into a fierce scowl.

_Damn. There goes any chance at some peaceful thinking_.

Yeah, Cross was definitely stalking him. He wouldn't miss that ridiculous white-striped head anywhere.

Back on edge and irritated, he slid down the four or five stories that the apartment was comprised of, then strode across the street through the ever-present traffic, ignoring the screeching brakes and furiously blaring horns. One taxi even rolled into him. He was pretty sure he'd left a sizable dent in the front bumper. Not his problem.

The man stood up as he approached, looking unimpressed with Mercer's clear annoyance. He crooked a finger and gestured down the sidewalk. Alex followed his glance; at the corner of where the park ended and the ever-present row of buildings began, there was a dip off the side of the road, leading to a boarded-off subway entrance. Nobody had any reason to pass through there, so it was as much seclusion as they needed. If it was even necessary at all. Still fuming, he stalked after the captain.

"Hmm." Cross sounded irritatingly satisfied, once they'd arrived. "Knew I'd find you here."

"And how, may I ask?" Mercer grated out, kicking at a fallen poster. Was it too much to ask, to get an hour alone without being pestered by self-righteous bastards? If the veteran had another plan, it could go do something anatomically unlikely with itself for the moment – he was _not_ in the mood to put up with the Wisemen.

"Requested to do a search, got clearance pretty easily. I've got your general patterns of movement tracked down. You were obviously going to go back to Dana's, so I headed up to Harlem, and when the cameras showed you leaving and heading west… Well, there aren't any hives between here and your apartment, but eyewitness reports do show that this building has a reputation for Zeus sightings. You might want to pick a new spot to chill around in, by the way, because that's something all of Blackwatch has noticed, not just me." He glanced up the stairs, over towards the park. "Nice view, though. Cute."

Alex paused as the implications of this sank in. "Have I ever told you that you're an asshole? If not… Cross, you're an asshole."

The man shrugged, nonplussed. "I could avoid this if you'd carry a damn cell phone. Probably still would, though. You're shockingly easy to find."

The virus merely growled in response.

"So. Heard you made it out." Finally getting down to business, Cross's voice was neutral, but there was a shadow of something that Mercer couldn't quite place that lurked in his expression. "Escaped a containment team."

Alex didn't feel like mentioning that he hadn't even been conscious at the time. "Yeah."

"Knew it'd take more than that to stop you," he grunted. "Although you weren't looking too great. Still aren't, really. Uh. You feeling alright?" Cross asked awkwardly. Weird question to ask to a _virus_, but the guy did look noticeably more haggard than usual.

"Decent enough," came the clipped answer.

"All right." The veteran chuckled weakly. "Wouldn't want you throwing up on my new boots."

Mercer's expression soured. "About that…"

Cross shrugged. "We're fucked."

The viral monstrosity sighed. "Yeah," he agreed, looking skyward. "We're fucked. Not gonna stop fighting, but… Dana always told me I was a shitty liar, so I won't bother trying to pretend I think this city's going to make it out alive. You know?"

"Oh, I fuckin' know," the captain admitted tiredly. It was freakishly strange to think about, but what was the point in thinking? Right now, for at least this moment… The specialized, time-hardened virus-hunting supersoldier and the fledgeling freak of non-nature, a plague in human form, felt unified; not in tentative alliance and necessity, but in real camaraderie. In… actual _understanding_; such a rare novelty for either of them. Everything was falling to pieces, and both men, who were used to being utterly undefeatable with nothing more than their own strength to back them up, found themselves nearly powerless to stop it.

"So you probably got debriefed," Alex mused after a few seconds' pause. "What does Blackwatch make of this? Actually, what the hell happened after I… you know. How are you not dead?"

"I have no idea. They just went all mother-son for a minute, then ran off."

"Probably didn't consider you a threat. Or thought you were more useful alive than dead."

"Well, thanks for the compliment." Cross glowered.

"It's a warning." Mercer's eyes flashed. "Speaking from experience, if Elizabeth Greene or her son toys with you and then lets you live, it's because they want something from you. Or they want to make something _out_ of you. Greene never stopped trying to get me to 'see', not until the end – she was pretty much a zombified hippie version of that one guy from Star Wars. Pariah's also big on the cryptic shit, but he can _make_ you listen. Or me, anyways. But you're not totally human, Cross – don't think I can't tell that. And if I can sense it, there is no way in hell that they haven't."

"…Shit." The captain had never even thought of it that way – that the source of his abilities would be a curiosity to the hive leaders.

"Just keep on your guard. If they're interested in you, they're going to try to rip your mind apart rather than your body. And it's probably worse. But you didn't answer half of my question. What's the situation?"

Cross shelved the rather disturbing advice aside and made a note to think on it later. "Mother and Pariah escaped to the subway systems. We're tracking them, but they've got a perfect vector. It's gonna spread, fast."

"They hardly need it," Alex noted darkly. "The city's already infected. The hive just needed a leader to spiral out of control again. We don't have the same sort of grace period we did the first time – Greene doesn't have to build everything up from scratch again. And honestly, Pariah scares the fuck out of me. I don't know what he can _do_. I don't suppose your scientists took any useful records on that, the whole forty years you had the kid in a box?"

"If they do, they haven't shared it. Hierarchy's chaotic right now, but I can't imagine they'd be holding onto assets at a time like this. So they probably don't. We weren't exactly letting him create his own hives in there."

"Well, Manhattan makes a great petri dish, doesn't it?" Mercer's voice dripped with sarcasm. "I just can't understand _why_ anyone would set up lethal biological research in one of the most populated cities in the world. It's not like that could backfire horribly."

"Mercer," Cross sighed, "you're not gonna hear this again, so treasure it. I could not fucking agree with you more."

"Some of the brightest minds in the country didn't, apparently, so pardon me for not having much faith in humanity's collective ability to not be a pack of retards. But at least you're not an idiot. Just an asshole." Alex's expression grew serious. "I've got a request."

The veteran frowned, wary. "I don't have as much power as you think."

"Just…" Alex's face contorted over the word. "_Please_. I need to get my sister out of here. Everything's going wrong. I can't risk losing her again. It's like you said; I can't spend all of my time watching over her. And even if I did, it might not do any good. I don't even know how I'm supposed to fight this time."

Cross stared resolutely at the boards nailed across the subway's entrance. Hearing that sort of poorly veiled desperation in anyone's voice was painful. "What do you expect me to do?"

"A visa, fake identity, clearance… fuck it, I don't know." He gestured frantically. "You've got authority, you have connections – get Dana off of this island, Cross, and I'll do anything you ask. _Anything_."

"It's not that simple. I can make suggestions, but I can't handwave the screening that follows. Your sister spends a lot of time around you? She's going to light up the viral detectors like a Macy's Christmas display. And that's assuming nobody recognizes her. The quarantine's gotten tighter, too – it's been extended to the Brooklyn borough as well, but nobody's going to get outside of that." He looked up. "I'm sorry, Mercer – I really am. But there's no way I can smuggle her out of here, especially with her being _your_ sister. We're stuck here. We've just got to do the best we can with it."

The scowl that twisted Alex's face could have burned a hole through concrete.

"You know what's a joke?" He kicked the ground, voice impassioned. "The world. This entire fucking world."

"Come up with a new one, Mercer." Cross fingered his chin. "That line's overused."

"I'm goddamn serious. Goddamn? Hah. If there is a god, I'm sure he's having a lot of fun with us up there. I used to think that everyone was just at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Now? We're all at the wrong place at the wrong time, because we fucking _exist_." Mercer dug his foot into the pavement again, worrying at the already ruined rubble. "I've just about made humanity out. You're made to run around in circles and suffer, nothing greater than that. And then, when you're done scrabbling around hopelessly at somebody else's expense, you die."

The captain frowned. "And would you say nothing here's worth fighting for? I know you can remember all of the lives you ended. You might be too busy running around killing things to be happy – let's face it, you're a pretty fucked-up creature – but were none of them enjoying their lives?"

Alex laughed, a bitter parody of a laugh. "Happiness? Captain, let me tell you a story. There was a woman – oh, what was her name? Sandra… Sandra Klein. She was in her late thirties – moved to the city to be an actor, but the career never went anywhere – just a few backstage jobs, some extra roles on mediocre shows, and she missed the suburbs pretty bad. Was thinking of going back. She lived in an apartment with her two children; her husband was overseas in Iraq. It just so happened that his date for coming home was a few days into the Infection. So that morning, brimming with _happiness_, she took her kids and hailed a cab down to take to the airport. She'd seen something on the news that warned her against going out, but she hadn't really understood it, and it couldn't have been more important than her beloved's return anyways. She didn't approve of the driver's choice of music, but her children were so excited about seeing their daddy after three years that she wasn't really able to be annoyed.

"About halfway there, another car slammed into the taxi's side, sending it spinning a ways. Somehow, the collision itself didn't harm them, although it did jam both doors on the left. After a few moments of swearing, the cab driver suddenly lost possession of his head. It flew into the backseat as a Hunter crashed through the car's front, roaring. Oh, she remembered that – the hot, sticky feel of his blood, her little boy and girl shrieking as the monster struggled past the headrests and swiped at them. Purely on adrenaline, she forced the door open – it came off its hinges entirely – and tore her kids out.

"She stumbled onto the street, screaming at her boy and girl to stay close as she tried to make her way to safety. New York City didn't even look like New York City anymore – the sky itself was somehow red, the sunlight filtering through a bloody haze, and with the music gone, she could hear the ambient screams clearly. Wrecked cars were everywhere, some overgrown by fleshy things she'd seen once in a horror movie. And there were people around, lots of them. Some ran, and some _lumbered_.

"In this moment of brief shock, she'd taken her eyes off her children. Beyond reason with panic, they'd scrambled away. There was another woman wearing the same color shirt as she had, and they'd mistakenly clung to her – Sandra ran towards them as they looked up and realized their folly, because their real mother wasn't disfigured, great tumors pushing her features to the side and dripping god-knows-what down her face. The Infected woman clawed at them, gurgling, and before Sandra could so much as reach them, another Hunter barreled towards them and trampled all three. Under its weight, they broke against the pavement like so much meat.

"And then? She looked up, screaming something about god, something incoherent even to her. But she didn't see her god. Through her tears, she saw a nightmare among nightmares - that thing she'd seen a few clips of on TV, something she hadn't even believed in. The Monster of Manhattan itself was there, scything through the wreckage like some demon out of hell. And unfortunately for her, it was trying to recover from some aerial pursuit, and needed the biomass to regenerate. But she hardly cared, even as its tentacles dug through her skin and tore her apart from the inside. She'd lost everything. She _wanted_ to die."

Cross said nothing.

"But, see, the thing is, she never needed to leave the house that day. Her husband's flight was never supposed to leave. The pilot missed the orders, the quarantine, the word that Manhattan had been closed off, whatever. It was shot down by a pair of your Blackwatch Apache Longbows guarding the coast, and her husband drowned alongside the other fifty-three veterans on board.

"So, no. If there's such a thing as this happiness of yours, I'm convinced it exists solely to make everything worse when it all falls apart. And since everything falls apart at the end, I'm not going to make that mistake."

The Blackwatch captain was silent for a long time. "You know, everyone you've consumed died an unfortunate death by proxy."

"Oh, I know that. Death at the hands of the likes of me, probably not the kindest way to go. But you'll have to pardon me for having not seen enough good here to merit there being any point to all of this – among both the living and the dead."

"So, to sum everything up, you're a nihilist." Cross sighed dramatically - in truth, he wasn't really sure how to reply. "Well, shit. That just makes you even harder to deal with."

Mercer barked out another joyless laugh. "No, I'm just not going to delude myself into believing there's a reason for all of this. There's no higher purpose, no compensation for trying and failing. Things just _are_, and we can only make what we can out of them. I'd be an idiot to expect that there's some sort of happy ending waiting after all of this. Being realistic is a hell of a lot more useful than sitting around dreaming about shit that's just not gonna happen."

Cross was curious despite himself. Mercer and his motives had always been enigmatic, but… "If you don't think that you can fix anything, and you hate everything with the exception of one Dana Mercer, then what _are_ you fighting for?"

"I hate some things more than others." Alex shrugged.

"Such as…?"

He glanced at him askance. "Care for another story?"

"You're talkative today." Cross folded his arms. "Well, I don't see why not."

Alex frowned to himself. Really, he _was_. Why was he ranting to Cross, of all people? It was definitely unlike him.

It was strange to have somebody _listen_. Somebody who already understood his shadow world and didn't flinch away from an uncensored version of the truth.

And reminiscing on the past was better than thinking about the future, the things he was going to have to face when came home, the way Dana was going to look at him – yep. Best not to think about it. Let his mouth keep moving if it meant he could keep his mind on the things he'd _already_ destroyed rather than the things he was about to.

"Then pay attention. There was a guy. Twisted life, grew up in an orphanage. Never had a father; his mother was released from prison when he was ten, and he went back into her custody. Orphanage was better. When she wasn't drunk, she was trying to get drunk. He preferred when she was drunk, though – she got violent sometimes, but she was easier to get around. He quickly learned how to hide, and when that wasn't an option, how to trick her. To hurt her before she could hurt him."

"Sounds like a great way to grow up," the captain noted, wondering where this was going.

"Don't start feeling sorry for him," Alex said sharply. "He paid the world back wholesale. When he was fifteen, his mother went back to jail and he was left in charge of the household – if you could call it that. He had greater aspirations. Took the first chance he could get to escape it; some extensive scholarships got him into a good college. Academics were easier to deal with than people, so he threw himself into his work and shut everyone else out. Graduated with flying colors, went straight into Gentek."

Cross frowned. Now he had his suspicions on the recounting's direction.

"It was perfect for him – relatively independent, great pay for deeply immersive work, something he could test himself against. Plenty of time to himself. And of course, he didn't care how morally dubious his projects were. He took note of his coworkers, but only befriended them when it suited him. They were smart, but he was convinced that nobody could match up to his genius - like there was something he could envision, something everyone else was too ordinary and blind to recognize. Through connections, he managed to get himself into a pretty high-up job - one that saw his vision realized. A relatively shady project, but the paycheck was colossal, and genetic engineering was his specialized field. His art. He wanted to leave his mark on the world." Mercer snorted derisively.

"He spent a few years working on Blacklight. But as the job neared completion, things got dodgy. He knew there was something wrong with the project. Some inquiries here, some disappearances there. The results vanishing, along with anyone who knew about them. And he was aware that he knew quite a bit.

"So he looked for a way out. A way to slip off the radar. He arranged some flights, a new visa – and figured out just what he might need in order to earn himself safe passage on the way.

"In the meantime, there was a girl. No, a young woman now… then… still now. He'd looked after her when she was little, back when he was still sort of human. It didn't last - he'd grown a little more distant and twisted with every passing month until he couldn't be bothered to notice her anymore. And then he left. She hadn't seen her brother in years. They'd parted on nasty terms, and the incident had haunted her ever since." He paused, brow dragged down in a bitter scowl. "Didn't affect _him _at all, of course."

"You're talking about Dana, right?" Cross cut in.

Mercer gave a curt nod. "She _came_ to Manhattan because she wanted to try again – to forgive him for being a royal asshole, to reconnect with the brother she hadn't seen in five years. Heh. As if you could have connected with him at all. He was… exasperated. Didn't want to deal with any interruptions to his work, anyone who'd notice where he was going. But then he realized something; his little sister had been a crafty one, hadn't she? Working in journalism, or something like that. Not that he cared about her dreams, but they were suddenly in line with his goals. A tool in his arsenal. She was an investigator, and she was loyal to him, wasn't she? So he _used_ her. She came to try and rekindle dead bonds, and he dragged her into his deadly game for the sake of information."

"She meant nothing to you…_ him_… at all?" The captain raised an eyebrow.

Something like a growl rumbled in the Blacklight virus's chest. "She didn't mean enough to stop him. He knew she was in the immediate vicinity of the fallout, that New York City would become ground zero if Blackwatch forced his hand. Didn't try to warn her. Didn't care. When it all came down to the end, he threw down the vial anyway.

"He got the coward's way out – a quick, easy death, and good fucking riddance to him. But then what? He made a monster and left it to clean up his mess."

He flipped his hand over, palm facing up. "But, see, a monster isn't great at fixing things. So I ran around and broke even more shit, and then everything went to hell in a handbasket – or it would have, if we weren't already in hell. The main thing I'd wanted during the Outbreak… I wanted to find whoever was responsible for this. And I wanted to make them suffer. I wanted to make them hurt like they had hurt me, how they had gotten the whole damn world to hurt me. But then I learned I was chasing after my own shadow. And you were right – I'm not Mercer at all, I'm the Blacklight virus. I thought that was damning, but knowing everything now... it's probably the only piece of the truth that didn't hurt. The real culprit had died before everything began. The only reason I didn't realize I was somebody else earlier on was because I didn't remember who I'd been before."

"You didn't exactly stop your revenge there," Cross pointed out critically.

"There are a ton of people guilty in all of this. Everyone behind Hope, everyone who worked on Blacklight. All of your Blackwatch psychopathic fucks. But if there's anyone and anything I hate, it's Doctor Alexander J. Mercer. And if he wanted to damn the world…" Alex shrugged. "Then I'll save it. Not because I care about everyone's lives. Because it wasn't what he'd wanted. Do I need anything more than that?"

It was a crude means of thinking, but… maybe he didn't. If the virus wanted to spite its former self – well, it had picked a good host to play alter ego to. Although the captain found it ironic that Alex Mercer the first had been _so_ horrible of a person that even _Zeus_ was revolted by him. "And if he didn't care about his sister, you'd do anything to look after her?"

"Fuck off." Mercer's words were undertoned with a distinct hiss. His eyes were narrowed nearly to slits. "Dana is above _any_ of that. If you think I'm looking after her out of spite, I'll snap your limbs off and skip you across the bay. Don't say that. Don't _ever_ say that."

"All right, all _right_, I'm sorry I asked." Cross lifted his hands up in surrender. "Just trying to fuckin' understand here. You don't really make much sense. If you hate Mercer so much, why do you walk around looking like him, anyways? You could take anyone's face if you wanted. I can't imagine it'd be that hard."

Alex didn't answer; he shrugged again, fiddling with his hood.

Once it was apparent that he wasn't getting a reply, Cross sighed and checked his communicator. He'd already wasted enough time here. "Well, as nice as this heart-to-heart's been, I've got places to be." The captain grimaced. "Double-crossing is a pain in the ass. It's probably better if we work apart for a while. I've got enough blank spots on my recent record already."

Mercer nodded. "Understood."

"I'll call your apartment if something comes up. In the meantime, do all you can from your end. I don't care what you've got against Blackwatch. Try to stay out of our way. This is bigger than your vendetta."

"You think I don't know that?" he snorted, putting a hand against the poster-covered wall. "It's like you said; there are bigger things at stake. As long as Blackwatch is doing less to destroy Manhattan than the Infected are, I'll focus on the Infected. Screw with the winning side, you know. Look after yourself, Cross." The virus's face was suddenly grave. "I… oh, the hell with it. The world needs more people like you. People who've got power and don't use it to ruin everything for their own gain."

Coming from Mercer, it was both a massive compliment and probably not something he should be proud about. "…Well, thanks. You too, Mercer. I mean, looking after yourself, not on the needing more of you part. But keep yourself alive."

"I don't want more of me," he agreed. "That's why I'm fighting. It's nice being on top. Besides, the only Infected bastard I trust is myself."

With that, he sprang out of the subway entrance and up to an adjacent apartment's roof; from the periphery, he gave Cross a lazy, half-mocking salute. "And by the way, don't think I like you or anything. You're just useful and not enough of a standard Blackwatch fuckup to merit eating. See you around."

He didn't bother to wait for the captain's reply, leaping across a series of buildings – he'd had enough talking for one day. Dana's outburst had left him feeling unusually drained, and he'd spilled some things to Cross that he definitely shouldn't have. The captain probably thought he was going soft. On the bright side, they were apparently going to split for some time, so he'd be able to get some time to himself for once without having to worry about random interruptions he wasn't allowed to decapitate.

Or he wouldn't. This wasn't a great time for sitting around, not with the city taking another nosedive.

He didn't really feel ready to face Dana again until he vented his rage at… well, the entire world, sans a few things, on something. Since the balance of the war was now tipped pretty firmly in favor of the Infected, he figured it'd be prudent to even the odds a little.

It was always a great feeling when he had a solid reason to follow his natural drive to tear things apart.

0o0o0

Twenty minutes later, he found himself in Gramercy, ready to cash in on those instincts.

He'd picked apart most of the remaining hives, tearing apart the infection whenever it sprang up, but in light of recent developments, he doubted that Redlight was going to stay manageable. Not wanting to risk contact with the hivemind, he'd scouted out this area through scent; there didn't seem to be a central hive yet, but the reek of the virus was thick in the vicinity.

It was clearly just springing up, though; the buildings were still relatively spotless and bore only old scars, free of living tendrils or growths. And he'd encountered no true walkers, although he did see the start of some – a few citizens staggering about in the empty street, faces slack and vacuous eyes glazed. He'd ended them quickly; most weren't even human enough to remember how to plead. Their minds had already been burnt out, leaving him with nothing more than a few disconnected images and names.

The night had descended quickly, although real darkness wasn't really a part of it. The skies were starless over Manhattan, always – the blazing lights that lit up its nightscape eclipsed the heavens, even when the night was clear. Gramercy wasn't a hotspot, and fewer neon signs and fluorescent beams illuminated the area, but the wan light was more than enough for him.

Abruptly, his head tilted up, eyes narrowed. The curling currents of largely stagnant air had brought a whiff of an unfamiliar scent, something Infected but subtly different from the rest of the disease that hung like a miasma over the area. There was something about it that he couldn't place, but it had his hackles up.

…It was almost like his own, he realized. Not the comforting and safe trace that filled his apartment or marked his recent tracks, but just close enough to evoke recognition. Dissimilar and distorted enough to clearly belong to something else, but just as deviant from the Redlight he was used to.

Was this Pariah? Or Greene? It didn't match up to his memories of either, but… something was very wrong here.

His arms began to warp fitfully, the only display of his sudden unease, as he crossed the remainder of the dark road, locking on this scent trail. He turned the corner onto a new street – this one seemed entirely deserted, and practically no lights glowed from the rows of windows. It might have been eerie, but shadows were just another sanctuary to Mercer; his home ground, just like the towering skyscrapers and endless buildings.

Ever since he'd first awakened, the shadows had always meant protection. Now… maybe the past few days were catching up with him, but he couldn't shake the disconcerting notion that he wasn't alone.

He glanced around. Nothing seemed off; his keen eyesight picked out no more movement than the silhouettes of some litter tumbling along in the breeze, and the empty streets were eerily silent for the Big Apple. At least people weren't entirely stupid, that New York City's inhabitants had some inkling that they should stay indoors unless necessary. Nearly three months after the calamity at Penn Station, Manhattan's nightlife was a mockery of its former self. The quietude during these twilight hours made it easier for him to detect his surroundings – so right now, he could say with certainty that he was alone. There was nothing that could escape his scrutiny, so why was he so tense? The more he searched and saw nothing, the more overwhelming the feeling of being watched grew. Hell, he was sliding into a crouch without intending to, and he couldn't tell if the buzz in his ears was imaginary or if he had started growling.

…No, his throat was vibrating. Definitely growling. He forced himself to stop. That was one of the habits that Dana had been adamant about him working on, and if he couldn't stamp it out on his own volition, she'd start interfering. There was very little that terrified him more than his sister's well-intentioned meddling. But a sound trailed on for a half-second after he'd ceased. Not an echo of his own involuntary noise, either – a scraping, scrabbling rustle. He cursed softly; there was definitely something there, and his body had figured that out long before any of his senses could pin it down. That strange, deviant scent was strong now, definitely close. His hair was standing on end, limbs thrumming with tension as he shifted his eyesight into the infrared spectrum –

He leapt out of the way just in time to avoid the hunched figure that shot out of the darkness with a screeching call.

It was Infected, that much was obvious; he could see it clearly in the moonlight as he reverted his half-changed eyes, watching it snap into clarity as it whirled around from its failed charge. But it wasn't anything he'd seen before – too thin to be a Hunter, but far more mutated than any of the more evolved Walkers he'd encountered. Those creatures were for the most part deformed, flesh overgrown with Redlight's cancer, with a few useful evolutionary happenstances that strengthened them. This thing was too streamlined, too purposed to be a random and uncontrolled evolutionary path.

_It's not a fluke_, he realized. _It's a new species._

It stood about a foot shorter than him, if 'stood' was the right word for something perpetually bent over. Its legs seemed shrunken and poorly formed, but bulged with muscle; above them, at the base of the spine, a stubby, vestigial nub of a tail twitched uselessly. Compared to its legs, its arms were so long and skeletal they appeared misshapen. Jutting, irregular bones were visible under the stretched skin, widening out at the wrist. Claws longer than his own sprouted from three mismatched, malformed fingers. Those talons had to be at least two feet long. They were _made_ to rend somebody cleanly in half. Possibly lengthwise.

The thing's face was barely human anymore; the lower jaw had retracted to the point of disappearing, leaving its mouth perpetually gaping and revealing an upper row of jagged teeth. Its dangling tongue was long and snakelike, and writhed freely, drawing odd patterns in the air and occasionally jabbing in Mercer's direction. A shock of dull, dark hair clung to the nape of its neck, all that remained of some old hairstyle. Oversized, dilated eyes – meant for seeing in the dark, then, and not infrared – bulged from the ruined visage, watching him warily as he paid the same attention to it.

It hissed again, raising one set of claws.

This creature might have belonged to a new strain, but it was still just another Infected beast – nothing against the virus's genetically-altered ultimate incarnation. He grabbed its arm as it lashed out again, trapping it and shifting his free hand into a grotesquely thick, blocky parody of itself, dull gray and hard as metal. He brought it down like a sledgehammer over the Infected's struggling form and crushed it instantly; his hammerfist then dissolved into feeder tendrils and drew in the remains.

Blinking away the usual rush of meaningless, broken pictures that came with the Infected, Alex rocked back on his heels, frowning. Even _consuming_ it had felt different – easier, somehow, even when the act of devouring was effortless and natural. There was less resistance, less work – it was smoother, quicker. He didn't understand.

The immediate source of that inexplicably familiar scent was gone, but he could still smell it, faint and mingled with the trace of other forms of the Infection. Furthermore, it came from several different directions, when he pushed aside thought and withdrew into complete sensory awareness a few seconds later.

So there _were_ more of them.

He gave his surroundings a quick glance; confirming he was alone, he allowed himself the luxury of groaning. And then punching a series of craters into the street. His sister was still trapped in the city, and while he might be able to get out on his lonesome, there was practically no chance of her surviving his methods if he brought her along. A little over a day, and there were already new variants, alongside their two masters – one of which could stop him in his tracks with a single thought, and the other who had issues with staying dead. He knew he was tempting fate, but didn't everything have to bottom out at some point?

Greene had only been back for a few hours. Pariah had a day on her, at most. How was it that everything was mutating so quickly? It had taken far longer than this for the leaders, for the hydras, even the shambling so-called evolved infected. The hunters, Greene had been cultivating before he'd 'freed' her. Viral evolution was a rocky path, full of false starts and dead ends; his own highly mutable genetics allowed for a lot of neat, concise shortcuts, but for creatures that couldn't rearrange their composition on a cellular level – basically, everything except for him – a useless or hindering mutation could make any particular organism useless. Refining an Infected, creating something so different and functional, perfected enough to replicate… well, in truth, creating a new strain wasn't something he had any experience with. Greene's memories were strange and often incomprehensible, and while he was certain that he still somehow had them even after Pariah had clearly copied them, trying to understand their contents only left him in a state of disorientation. But either way, from his own experience with the Infection, it seemed fast. Frighteningly fast.

During the first Outbreak, Manhattan had been hell. There was no other word for it. Even in comparison to the potential dangers that darkened the horizon of present times, it was still hell. But if the initial calamity had been the pit, the bottom… what did that make the situation now?

Mercer had a feeling that with the way things were going, they were rapidly approaching another circle of hell entirely.


	10. To Cross That Line, Part 2

Despite everything, the dawn still came. The skies had gone from navy to hazy gray, and crimson tinted the edges of a few eastward straggler clouds like fiery embers or drops of blood. The horizon lightened until it settled upon a shivering silver shade. Then, reliably and like an old friend, the sun crept above the waters of the distant bay.

It was a small comfort, sometimes. Alex had never been one for metaphors or philosophy – the fact that the planet's rotation cyclically created the illusion of a blazing ball of gas travelling across the sky had absolutely no relation to the turnout of upcoming events. The city got brighter on a predictable basis, but the future did not, and the fact that people cited those situations as intertwined was just another reason why humanity was completely unfathomable.

But it was a constant, something he could rely upon. There weren't many things he could be sure of; he was too accustomed to hatred and betrayal for that. So it was… nice, somehow, to watch the skies lighten and herald the return of life to the streets below. Even as the mid-October days grew shorter and he held a condescending dislike for the crowds, it was gratifying to see. Buildings fell and people died; safe and serene zones of the city on one day could crawl with the disease the next, and see the military carve out their centers upon its ground a week later. But day and night were predictable, if nothing else.

He needed some stability right now.

The burgeoning red zone in Gramercy had been prematurely ended; the night had passed in a blur of violence, butchering everything that burned with the unnatural heat of the infection. He had encountered more of the strange new monsters along with a few hunters and many infected civilians in the slow process of dying; to top off the killing spree, he'd torn apart a starter hive with nothing more than his muscle-engorged fists.

Then, in that still, shivering hour that bisected the dawn and the dead of night, he'd headed north and west towards another of his familiar haunts.

He'd watched the sunrise from the Empire State Building's pinnacle. It was as far removed from the ceaseless chaos below as he could get; high, even for him, as he'd perched on the structure's decorative spire. The air was thin at such altitude, and cleaner than usual, less laden with smog. It helped clear his mind, just a little. It was also extremely visible – after all, it was only the single highest point in the city. While it was a painfully obvious spot to be seen at, he'd learned early on that no helicopters wanted to shoot at the building. They'd fly circles around him, but as far as firing went, it was often a stalemate, barring a few experiences with some of the more ruthless Blackwatch pilots. He hadn't seen any this morning, though, so it was a moot point.

The rare serenity from on high could not have contrasted more sharply with how he felt. And those thoughts had followed him down to earth, inflamed sharply less than two blocks westward as he soared over the roof of Penn Station – where everything had begun. They boiled still as he knelt in the shadows of an abandoned apartment's roof in Midtown West.

New monsters. Evolution. The city, getting pranced upon like a giant playground, millions of lives forming the rope in a collossal game of-tug of-war. Pariah, Greene. Himself. All linked together by the virus's gripping tendrils. Everything. How could any of this be stopped? Where did he fit in? What _was_ the virus? Greene's voice, all that time ago – "_The reason_." His question still stood – _for what?_ Both intrinsic and incomprehensible, the subject cast long and toxic shadows that thoroughly blackened every inch of his mind.

There was no point wasting thought on blame. He'd been naïve and weak, and Pariah had used him to escape his captivity. He'd been unprepared, and he hadn't been able to stop Greene from being pulled out of his body. Both were his fault, by at least some measure. Fine. The past was done with; as much as he might wish otherwise, there was nothing he could do to change it.

What he could do, though, was change the future. The next time they met, he wouldn't be weak, he wouldn't be unprepared. He'd be ready. He'd strike them down and burn the pieces.

…Yeah, that was a lot easier said than done. He growled and buried his face in his hands. Fuck the world.

Knowledge was a weapon in its own right – a hand to guide his many tools of death when force alone fell short. And it was an easy enough thing to gather. He ripped secrets from his enemy's brains, at the price of immortalizing their loves and hates and dying screams along with those few useful tidbits. That toll had become both easier and more excruciating to pay… but what if nobody knew the answers? What if there was nothing there to take?

This was the conundrum he pored over in the crisp midmorning air, upon a filthy roof and a crumbling emergency staircase. Everything in his arsenal was useless when faced with Pariah's will. How was he expected to fight when he couldn't get his own body to obey him?

And for once, the answers came from within.

It was a feeling, a desire – another eddy in his swirling sea of repressed wants. At first, he paid it no mind, brushing it aside as he'd trained himself to. But while hunger and violence retreated with little resistance, this ugly, twisted little sentiment persisted, cropping up in his thoughts again and again whenever he thought of Pariah, of Greene.

He gritted his teeth, finally recognizing it. Virulence. Beneath his carefully maintained inert exterior, pathologic agents swirled inside – diseases necessary for his preternatural strength and ability to regenerate, but also things that would tear apart the world in short order if they escaped from under his skin. Which was exactly what the virus wanted – an organism below reasoning or thought, it followed the only prerogative it had. And the Blacklight virus did not want to stay locked up inside a single body.

Well, it could go fuck itself. He wasn't going to play god with the world like his former self. He wasn't going to spread the virus. He wasn't Greene.

Greene and her hive…

The realization came slowly, pieces falling into place as he recognized what he had been fighting his damnedest to ignore all along. Petals of the truth spread open one by one, a flower unfolding in the morning light. It was a very spiky, twisted flower with grey blooms, and it probably cannibalized other flowers – no, cannibalized was the wrong word, so maybe it was a genetically engineered killer mushroom pretending to be a flower – but the comparison still stood.

He was Blacklight. He was infected. There was no escaping that, and he knew it, had accepted it long ago. Had even done so gratefully, in the face of the even _more_ damning alternative. But the virus was more than some substance that gave him powers – it was something that set the parameters for his existence, something that both sustained him and drained him, something that fought against his conscious mind more often than not these days. And there were some things that he couldn't stamp out at all. He could stop himself from acting, but not from feeling. From craving.

He was vulnerable because he _wanted _a hive, somewhere within the twisted depths of his viral mind. He responded fervently to Pariah's whim because his instincts _wanted _to submit, as long as it meant being a part of the collective.

But in some ways, even that felt unnatural. Because he was different, not only in conscious mind but in genetic dissonance. Because he was not created to follow, but to _lead_.

If he wanted Pariah to stop controlling him through the Redlight hivemind, he was going to have to make his own.

Well,_ that_ was just fucking perfect. He groaned.

He'd keep searching. It wasn't feasible – a perfect case of the solution being worse than the problem. Manhattan would be freed of Redlight and promptly slaughtered by its genetically engineered counterpart. As a disease, Blacklight was apparently ten times more lethal than its predecessor. Everyone in Penn Station had died within minutes. He'd eaten people who'd seen the security camera footage – the virus had only taken half a minute to bring people to their knees, frothing at the mouth and coughing up blood. Humanity wouldn't stand a chance.

_What if I controlled it?_ came an insidious little thought.

He shook his head violently. No, he wasn't going to allow himself to get a taste of that. He didn't… _trust_ himself. He knew what he was and how to – vaguely – carve out a definitive 'him' from the hodgepodge conglomerate of his mind, where raw Blacklight ended and the recreated Alex Mercer began. An entity outside of his nastier instincts. He knew how to keep himself in line with how things currently stood. And he knew his limits. There was a difference between choosing to consume somebody and stopping in the act. As he'd recently proved to himself, barring complete internal hell, he could choose to ignore his would-be prey. It was hellishly difficult at times, but wholly possible if he steeled himself. But trying to pull out after beginning to consume a person was impossible. It was more than losing control over his feeder tendrils, it was losing control over his ability to reason. If infection was the same way…

There had to be another way. He'd have to see if Dana had come up with any new information the next time he saw her.

Judging by their last conversation, he had a sickening feeling that he was going to have to give her some information of a different sort before she helped him out again.

And that was… crushing. Horrifying. Something he just couldn't face, all the while knowing that the longer he pushed it off, the worse things would be.

Not that the outcome would have ever been any different. He'd seen it with Karen, with Ragland – the terror and disgust. They didn't _understand_ – whether to betrayal or subservience, it drove them away, cut off any chance of a vaguely amicable relationship. There wasn't a semblance of equality; just pure and unadulterated fear of the unknown. And to see that on Dana's face… might just kill him. He didn't know. He didn't think he could stand it.

But if he left her to find everything out for herself, what would she uncover? What conclusions would she draw? The world viewed him as a terrorist, a monster with no greater motive than to kill everything in his line of sight. She might see something twisted, something worse than he truly was…

He laughed at that, a sound as bitter and cold as ice. Worse? That was a hilarious thought. Worse _how_? The truth was about as horrible as things could get. Nothing she could find would come _close_ to touching upon the true horror of his story. Maybe she could have grown to accept his habits, through denial if nothing else. But the fact remained that he had been posing as somebody she loved. That _he_ wasn't who she loved.

But… His hands clenched into fists. He _owed_ it to her. Definitely after all of this time, days and nights stretching into weeks of trying to put aside reality and hiding what he truly was. He'd entered her life and irrevocably made her a target; she'd gone from having an ordinary and probably happy routine to becoming a prime bargaining material for one of the country's most deadly and underhanded forces. The damage was done, and he couldn't undo that, but neither could he ignore the fact that his interference had barred her from living a normal life. Perhaps even permanently. And even after all he'd taken, he still hadn't allowed her the truth. He'd reasoned that it was to her benefit, that she'd be happier in ignorance. But it was glaringly obvious. The benefits were mostly his. He was a creature outside of human guidelines; he could take without giving. But not from her.

She deserved to know what kind of monster she was sheltering under her roof.

He closed his eyes. It was time to give her the truth.

0o0o0

Age was a confusing thing for Alex Mercer. Little of it seemed to apply to him, just a few bits and pieces - it was actually pretty absurd, it he stopped to think about it. Entirely ignoring the fact that he was a possibly-immortal construct of viral cells… He was a three-month-old that usually appeared to be aged around twenty-nine years. He had a predominant mindset that didn't seem to correlate well with either age, or humanity, for that matter, but it was superimposed over the experiences of hundreds of lives. A few thousand years' worth of memories, barely his.

He felt about a thousand years old now, as he stood before the door to apartment number 604. Everything was suddenly surreal, like he was moving underwater; detached and disconnected, making no more sense than familiar, habitual patterns. Mechanically, fingers curled over the knob. Hesitated. Turned it anyway. Patterns that were the only sketchy guidelines of humanity that he'd managed to hash out.

Pushed it open, stepped forward. Patterns that were about to break.

Dana didn't greet him – just gazed at him with an expression devoid of all usual warmth. For once, she wasn't at the computer, but sitting cross-legged on the sofa, an empty coffee cup beside her.

Maybe she was angry about what happened earlier. That was fine – he was used to anger; at least that was something he could understand. Maybe she'd just ignore him. He could handle that. Maybe he wasn't about to lose the only thing he could call his _life_. He avoided her eyes and strode past her resolutely, not sure where he was going.

"Alex."

He nodded stiffly in acknowledgement, not managing to face her. Damn it, why had he come here? Panic kindled in his chest; this had been a mistake, bringing his own doom upon him. Why the hell was he doing this on his own volition? His hands, jammed into his pockets, clutched tightly at the pseudo-fabric. His breathing sped up and his senses kicked into overdrive. The door was a few paces behind him; the window was closer, but took a few seconds longer to unlatch and pry open. Or he could forgo those fumbling moments and simply tear his way free of the walls that seemed to be closing in on him –

"Alex, look at me."

He did, and she trapped him with those sky-blue eyes.

"We can't go on living like this. We need to talk."

"And why can't we?" he asked plaintively. "Don't you think you might just be happier keeping your eyes shut? Do you ever stop to think that the truth might not be this… shining beacon of _happiness,_ and – and of _liberation_ that you build it up to be?"

"…I'm a _journalist._" She scowled. "Do you think I have to answer that question?"

"But this isn't just a job. This is our _lives_. When you know, there's no turning back. No forgetting. No returning to where we used to stand."

"That's why it's so _important_," Dana broke out. "It _is_ our lives. It's real, it's closer to home than anything I could try to write a scoop on. How… look, maybe the truth is as bad as you're making it out to be. But not knowing it is just as bad. Sometimes I can't sleep at night, just trying to figure out all of this hell out – and because I don't know what's going on, I'm probably dreaming up things worse than you really are. Or I'm hoping that things are better than they are, when I know they're not. But it's driving me insane. This isn't the right way – I just can't keep hiding from the truth forever. I deserve to know it, Alex. Let me make my own decisions. I know you don't like to talk about what happened, but… just stop torturing me like _this_!"

That stung, but at least it stung in the right place. If Dana was really and truly unhappy… He gnawed on his lip, another one of those pointless human habits that had leached into his mannerisms. If Dana was upset, then that was more important than any of his own woes.

He felt like he was signing his own death warrant with the words; turning himself in to Blackwatch, kneeling before Mother, throwing himself into the bay and waiting the long, agonizing weeks it would take for his body to dissolve away. "What do you already know?"

"Well…" She sighed. "Too much. Not enough. I… I've looked for stuff about you on Blackwatch's caches, but everything on Zeus… you, sorry. Seriously, they hardly ever use your name. Anyway, it's more than locked up. It's just not there. I can find footage of you doing a ton of crazy shit, but information? There's nothing there that I hadn't already figured out. I knew you had something to do with the virus. You're not like the other Infected, but… you're infected. You were special – something they did to you, that thing you were trying to find out. We've both been trying to avoid that, but it's been pretty obvious. You weren't immune to the disease – you just weren't catching it because you already had it, didn't you? The viral detectors; why else would they have tried to use them to find you? You mentioned the hivemind more than once, like you were a part of it. I noticed all of these… I guess I just tried to ignore them.

"But you know what really got me thinking?" she said quietly. "That one time, Cross called you a 'thing'. Not a guy, a person, a man – a thing. And I tried to rationalize it to myself for a while, that he was just pissed off – righteously so. But that's not the sort of name you really call anyone, is it? Oh, sure, we can swear at each other all we like, but we don't stoop down to calling other people '_it_'s… things. That isn't _natural_. And it occurred to me that Cross knows a lot more than I do."

"In some ways, he does," he replied hollowly.

"Yeah, well, this is one of those things. And I'm determined to change that. Alex, _look_." Her voice had taken on a sort of pleading note. "No more secrets. I need to know the truth. No matter how horrible it is, I'll listen. I'll try to understand. Just… please, _trust _me. You're my brother. That's stronger than all of this."

_It's not, because _I'm_ not!_ he wanted to cry out, as if that might explain his silence without incriminating himself beyond the point of no return. But that critical misunderstanding was why he'd managed to be with her this long, and a frantic desire to drink in that companionship while he still could held his tongue for a few seconds longer.

At his lack of forthcoming information, that softer undertone left her words. "I want to know the truth, and you _owe_ it to me, Alex. No more lies. How can you do everything that you can do and still be human?"

This was it. The moment he'd been dreading, the inevitable confrontation with the truth – the only enemy his weapons were useless against. He could practically feel something breaking inside of him, and he wondered, not for the first time, why it _hurt_, why she was so wonderful and caring and _different_ than everyone else, and maybe that in and of itself was why he had to lose her. Alex closed his eyes.

"I'm not."

She blinked. The words 'come again?' hovered at the tip of her tongue.

"I'm not human," he admitted wretchedly. "Yes, I'm infected. Technically. It's deeper than that. The Walkers you see on the street, the Infected, hell, Elizabeth Greene herself – they're more human than I am."

"Alex, you're not making any sense."

"_Nothing_ makes sense… but they were human once. They were people that got caught up in all of this madness and lost themselves to the Redlight virus. They were human before the virus burned them out. I'm not. I never was.

"Dana, listen." He felt like he was dying, struggling through a cloud of Bloodtox that thickened with every word. "I'm going to tell you everything I know about myself. Myself and… the person I used to be. I'm warning you, though, you're not going to like it. You'd be much happier if you could forget ever doubting who or what I was. Even if you just leave this point alone and try to live with it. The truth sucks. I'd forget it if I could."

His sister's stony silence was as good of a response as he was going to get. He sighed. "There are two ways I can go through this – chronologically, which would get straight to the point but probably wouldn't really make sense, or I can give you the scattered pieces of information as I learned them. It's a long story, and not an enjoyable one at all, but maybe… maybe you'd be able to realize why I did what I did back in the first Outbreak. God knows, everyone else thinks I was wrong. Sometimes I'm even inclined to agree with them. But I was desperate… and desperate men tend to do crazy things. Like your brother did."

"If you're going to start narrating yourself in third person, at least be consistent about it. You're making me cringe here."

Inwardly, he sighed. That was the Dana he knew. And the one he was about to drive away. "I'll get to that. Now, which way do you want me to crucify myself?"

She rolled her eyes. "Drama really does not suit you. Tell it from the start, like you saw it. I definitely could use some help understanding all of this crazy-assed shit."

"…All right." He took a deep breath, remembering an incomprehensible haze of strobe lights and fiercely throbbing pain. "It started on July twenty-seventh, the same night that Blackwatch tried to go after you. Well, things had gotten rolling a bit before then… but for me, that night – that's when it all began."

He wasn't one for sugarcoating. "I woke up in a morgue," he said bluntly. "Some scientists were arguing over my body. I decided it was a good idea to let them know I was alive when they got ready to vivisect me."

Dana's eyebrows shot up, but she refrained from voicing the barrage of questions that had clearly already formed.

"I didn't remember anything. Hell, the only reason I knew my own name was because it'd been tossed around when they were talking over me. When I got up, they freaked out and ran. I tried to go after them – I was as confused as hell – but I couldn't keep up. It was like trying to learn how to walk again. Probably was. I was hurting, too. Didn't know why, until I looked down and realized my chest was full of bullet holes."

She'd seen him take worse on leaked Youtube vids, but she couldn't hold back the shocked whimper that rose unbidden at that image.

"They were definitely real – I mean, I was in a fucking _morgue_ – but for whatever reason, I wasn't dying. They weren't even bleeding, even though pretty much everything I was wearing was smeared red. I could still breathe, still move… it was hard to think, but I was still pretty conscious, you know? I followed those scientists outside of Gentek, but before I could go and ask what the hell was going on, a helicopter landed and a bunch of soldiers got out. Didn't like the look of them, and the pair of scientists didn't seem to happy either, so I hung back. Next thing I know, the new guys have shot both of them in the head. Then they see me. And start shooting. Hurt like hell, but again, I just wasn't dying. I… I didn't know what to do. I ran away. Jumped a few fences, found a dark alley, but then that helicopter showed up again and I had to start running.

"I ended up getting chased all the way over to Chelsea, not too far from that place we ended up using as a safe house. I couldn't believe I was running so fast – and when I was finally getting used to that, I started running up walls. And kicked a helicopter out of the air. And threw a taxi. Jumped off of a forty-six story building and got right up. Got shot dozens of times. It was just… surreal. And painful. I was holding my own, but I just couldn't keep running, not when everything started hurting more and more. It was like I was getting shredded every time I moved. And those soldiers weren't letting up. Every street I turned, more were waiting; whenever I tried to get to the rooftops, a helicopter would open fire and force me back to the ground.

"But I was so weak. I couldn't run anymore. I crawled into an alleyway and waited to die."

"_Alex!_" His sister was horrified.

He held his palms up. "Obviously didn't happen, or we wouldn't be talking right now. And the entire Infection would never have happened, actually. Huh. But death and I have a 'play hard-to-get' relationship… not that it didn't try. A soldier found me. I was helpless, I couldn't move. Couldn't resist. But you know Blackwatch. Shoot first, ask questions later. He put a bullet through my head, just like that. Didn't matter. The end just wouldn't come, and I still hurt like hell.

"I wasn't even thinking, it was on reflex. I was just so _angry_, so sick of running… I just got up and killed him. Didn't take any effort. Grabbed his neck, threw him to the pavement. And my body just…" His voice was low, even huskier than usual. "He was the first one."

A convulsive shiver ran through Dana's body, but she made no move to back away.

"I thought his memories were mine at first, like I'd just spontaneously recovered from amnesia. But when I saw him pursuing me, saw it through his eyes, I knew the difference; that he was somebody else that was somehow in my head. The memories… they're not easy. I was still trying to sort out everything that was going on up there when I heard his commander approaching. And I just… turned into him, shifted into the guy I just killed. Knee-jerk reaction, didn't know how I was doing it." He looked down at his hands. "Still don't, not really.

"Anyway, the officer started yelling at me. Wasn't really sure what to do with him, but when he grabbed my shoulders and started shaking me, I realized that I was still… hungry. Or something. Whatever it is. I know that probably sounds sick, but I had no idea what was going on, I hurt like hell, I could just _feel_ that consuming the guy would make me feel better, and those men had been trying to kill me for no reason – none I knew, anyway."

"I know," mumbled Dana, gnawing at her lip. The fear and pain, she could empathize with enough, but the thought of her brother plunging his tentacles into another human being and _devouring_ them still chilled her to the bone. "I'm trying to understand."

He sighed. "Thanks. I know it's probably hard… Well, I consumed that soldier too. More memories. But these were more specific. And frightening. I had a sister. His men were going to kidnap her. You know what happened from there."

She nodded. "So… you didn't remember me on your own, then?" A twinge of disappointment nibbled at her chest, try as she might to suppress it.

"Not really, no. I… sort of did. When I thought of Dana Mercer, it was more than a name, a fact… the thought of these guys hurting _my sister_ freaked me out. I didn't even care about hiding anymore; I came as fast as I could."

It warmed her a little, in a very dysfunctional way – that her brother actually did possess a sense of family, some residual paternal instincts from when they'd both been young and he'd looked after her, before he'd grown into something distant and damaged. It was apparent now, of course, but maybe the pre-amnesiac Alex had cared too, and simply hadn't known how to show it.

"So, uh… I sent you to your apartment then, right?"

"Yeah. Ran there, testing out all of the weird stuff I could do – the running, the jumping. I wasn't running for my life or yours, so I had some time to play, to get used to it. To gauge what I could and couldn't do. Get a feel for it, you know? It seemed like there was nothing I couldn't do. I'd run as fast as I could, and then I'd just... try _harder, _and just like that, I'd be even faster. I'd push myself, and it... I just never reached the edge. I... I still haven't, I think.

"I still got there pretty fast. Then I started getting some real memories, ones that belonged to Alex Mercer. Nothing that made sense, not coherent like the ones before– just flashes, like a TV with a bad signal. There was a picture on the wall… me and a blonde girl on an autumn day. Touched it, saw a glimpse of her pleading with me, somewhere else. A parking lot, a grey sky. Didn't understand."

"Karen Parker?" she guessed.

"Didn't know it at the time, but yeah. Anyway, I didn't get to hang around. Blackwatch was waiting for me there, like you said. Whole place blew up, threw me to the street. Don't worry about it," he assured, seeing Dana open her mouth. "Didn't really hurt me, not even then. _They_ weren't expecting that… sent in a bunch of men, some helicopters. Got away, got the guy who was in charge of trapping my home. Then you'd picked up that lead on Greene… we know how _that_ worked out. My fault, though, not yours. I should have realized the parallels before I went charging after her.

"At this point, I had a little bit worked out. I was Alex Mercer; I had worked at Gentek on a project somehow related to Elizabeth Greene. There were two viruses, Redlight and Blacklight, and Blacklight had something to do with me. Blackwatch had tried to kill me, maybe to keep me quiet about that project, but it didn't work. Whatever they'd done in Penn Station, it had killed a lot of people, and caused me to wake up with no memories and a set of powers that was disturbing me less and less as time went on. They were blaming everything on me, they called me a terrorist… It made sense that they were trying to pin it all on me. They still wanted me dead, after all.

"Then you brought up Karen Parker, just as the Infection began. By that time, I was pretty sure I was infected too, somehow – the viral detectors, everything Blackwatch knew, something..." He hesitated, grimacing at the memory. "Something Greene had said to me. So that had to be why I had these powers… Meeting Karen wasn't like meeting you. I recognized her, but I didn't know how to feel. It wasn't there, it wasn't… it didn't fit, I guess. Still, she seemed confused too, so we had that much in common. I took her out of the infected zone; we found a place near the military, somewhere safe.

"She said she could cure the virus, stop this Outbreak that was starting. She said she could cure _me_. Getting Manhattan back to normal, I didn't even have to consider that. I wanted all of this hell to stop. But for _me_… I was scared, I guess. Was still a little freaked out on the eating people front – the memories were useful, but they didn't go away. And I saw the other Infected and feared I was going to end up like them – mindless, deformed. I was changing, getting stronger, and it seemed like it could have ended up going in that direction. So I took her up on it, got her some samples."

"And it didn't work?" Dana gestured vaguely towards him. "I mean, you're still, like… you know."

"Oh, it worked well." He laughed; a short, harsh bark of a sound. "Blackwatch had already gotten to her."

His sister covered her mouth. "Oh. _Oh, Alex_…"

"She sent me into a hive," he continued tonelessly. "That was when I met Cross – he and his team had set up an ambush. He put up a good fight, better than anyone else Blackwatch had thrown at me, but I came out on top. Still, I was stupid about it. Stopped to gloat, and next thing I know, he'd stuck a syringe full of Karen's 'cure' in my back."

"But… it was a cure, wasn't it?" Dana frowned. "Wasn't that… what you wanted? Was she lying about what it did?"

He scratched his chin. "No, not really. But killing the virus meant killing me. She failed to mention that minor detail. I was a fool for wanting to get cured, besides. Without my abilities, Blackwatch would have no trouble killing me. This was, _is_, the only way I can live. Both then and now.

"Anyway. As soon as that crap got injected into me, I couldn't… well, it was weird. I could change my appearance, but I couldn't form my weapons. They just fell apart and dissolved when I tried to make them. Didn't take long before I couldn't get them to work at all. And it _hurt_. Started in my shoulder, but it just kept getting worse and worse. My back was the worst off, but I could feel it everywhere. Like it was taking me apart, or something."

Dana winced and rubbed her own shoulder. "Damn. What'd you do then?"

It was his turn to cringe. "Came back to make sure you were all right, if you'd picked up any more information. And then we ended up having that, uh…" He stared resolutely at the floor, frowning. "Talk. The one that… didn't go over so well."

She gnawed on her lower lip, trying and failing miserably at not thinking about that conversation. Yeah, that was an understatement.

Even now, she wasn't remotely close to being comfortable with it – knowing that your brother went around eating people was probably one of those things you could never really get used to. So when she'd first heard it, it had almost been more than she could bear. She hadn't even tried to hide her revulsion. At the time, she'd _needed_ for him to leave, needed some time away from him so she could think and try to wrap her head around the horrible concept. That distance from Alex had been necessary for her to form any semblance of forgiveness.

But the expression on his face… the sharp agony that had shone plainly in those normally inscrutable eyes – it only registered now, close to three months later. The memory of that awful confession was burned into her skull, but it wasn't one she tried to dwell upon, not until now. She'd been too lost in her own horror to process _his_ reaction, some combination of apology and dismay and frantic desperation that managed to show just as much fear as her own. He'd reached out to her, and she'd recoiled. It was inevitable – there was no way that she could have mustered up any other response – but she'd never considered how that must have hurt _him_.

And he had already been hurting; she remembered his husky voice and awkward posture, how every movement had been ginger and devoid of his characteristic suddenness. He'd gone through biological hell, and while he was still reeling from sickness ramped up to eleven, she had hurt him again. It was both of their faults, but neither at the same time, and it changed nothing… but now she understood that that day's scars went both ways.

"I remember," she said softly. "You looked awful."

He cracked an empty smile. "Like shit, in your own words."

She didn't return it. "I…" _I'm sorry_, she wanted to say. But the words wouldn't come. She was sorry, yes, but at the same time, should she have acted any differently? _Could_ she have? Did she forgive him? It wasn't his fault – that much, at least, she could wrap her head around. He was what he was, whatever the fuck that was supposed to be, and it would be wrong to fault him for circumstances he hadn't apparently gotten a say in. Forgiveness, though… it implied a certain amount of understanding, if nothing else. And no matter how apologetic he was, it just wasn't something she could accept – she wasn't much more comfortable with his dietary habits than she'd been when he'd first admitted them in his typically disastrous way. It was the sort of thing that she could only cope with by resolutely ignoring.

"Did Ragland help, at least?" She could hope for that much; she'd found the doctor through his connections to Gentek, but to Alex, her timing on bringing him up must have been a total _deus ex machina_.

"Yeah. Ended up saving my life. I went and got some samples for him, and he eventually worked out a vaccine or something. I was pretty much dead otherwise. Anyway, I got healed, but while I'd been running around trying to save myself, the Infection had gotten a lot worse. The south half of the island was pretty much lost, Harlem was getting close to the same fate, and Hydras had started showing up. And…" His eyes tightened. "Leader hunters.

"I went back to check on you. You…" _You forgave me_, but he wasn't going to trick himself into thinking that things were going to be the same this time around, with all of the cards either on the table or next up for dealing. "You know what happened."

She did. Dana shuddered – her nightmares weren't going to get her forget that horrible chase any time soon.

"I couldn't catch up," he apologized wretchedly. "I'm sorry."

"You tried." In that tight, slimy grip, the world bouncing and spinning in crazy inversion, she remembered losing it – crying out, screaming for her brother. And she remembered him answering, calling back. Sometimes catching a glimpse of his desperate face, frozen in time, as he raced up and down the city's skyline to save her.

"And I failed. Wasn't good enough. It got away… I was terrified," he admitted softly. "I sort of went berserk, for a time. I couldn't think of anything else. I had to get you back. Nothing else mattered. I tracked down the Leader that had taken you, and used him to find where you were. Had a short fight with Greene, but it sort of went haywire." He scowled. "She coughed up this thing that was sort of a cross between a hunter and me. It didn't go down easy, but I beat it down and found you. You were unconscious, so I took you back to Ragland.

"The doctor had another trail, though. Somebody had left a map for me, marking a series of phone booths. Hey, a lead's a lead," he retorted, seeing Dana's incredulous stare. "Besides, I wasn't worried about anything they could throw at me. I just kept getting stronger, and their newest weapons weren't keeping up anymore.

"But the guy on the phone, he wasn't springing a trap. He had information. Information that…" He swallowed. This was it. "He told me that there was a meeting going on in Blackwatch headquarters, that there was some new weapon they were about to deploy. And… he also told me about Blacklight. About me. About…"

He took a deep breath. "Who I _wasn't_."

Dana noticed that his hands had started to fidget. "The Blacklight virus was made to dissemble and rebuild organisms from the cells up. But every subject it had been tested upon died horribly – their bodies couldn't handle it. When their immune systems tried to retaliate, it ripped them apart. As a result, nobody really knew what it could do beyond that very basic thing it had been tailored to perform. Until the first success came along. Me."

"So the virus gave you superpowers?" She looked somewhat confused, but not in the right way, the real way – she wasn't comprehending. "Transformed you into some sort zombie Superman?"

It would be so easy to say yes. So easy to let her believe that, to move on. To not push the break any farther. But he'd promised her the truth. He'd lied for so long. To continue keeping up this charade would be like…

…what Alexander J. Mercer would have done.

"It didn't transform me into anything. It _made_ me. I…" His voice faltered and broke for a beat. "Dana, I'm not your brother."

"_What_?"

Her exclamation seemed unnaturally loud in the small apartment – it echoed strangely in his ears, a record of her immediate denial set to repeat a thousand times.

"No. _No_. You - you can't -"

"I'm not Alex Mercer," he repeated dully. "I woke up looking like him because he was technically the first person I consumed. I have bits of his memories because his brain hadn't completely died when the virus got to him. And I still look like him because this was the only identity I ever really had. But I'm not him. I never was."

"But you – you…"

"I didn't know at first. But when I did, I lied about it. I just couldn't…" All of his justifications failed him; they sounded weak and cowardly to his own ears. "Dana, I'm so sorry."

She didn't seem to register anything; she was shaking her head slowly and had taken a few steps backward. "You can't actually _be _the virus, that doesn't make any sense." His sister's fingers were working at the air as if she could pull a conclusive argument out of empty space and stamp out these words that – Alex had been right – she didn't want to hear.

Alex fluttered his hands as he grasped for an answer. "Well, I guess not. It's not exactly accurate, but I'm not a scientist – not like _he_ was. I guess I'm a conglomerate of delocalized and reformable tissue that's been altered by and depends on the virus. But getting specific's a bitch. I was created by Blacklight, I'm made of Blacklight – I'm Blacklight."

Dana just frowned, still shaking her head, but inside her brain, gears were whirling. An amnesiac Alex made sense. That was comfortable, that was safe – that was _understandable_. But something that looked like and sounded like and talked like Alex and wasn't Alex at all?

But he _didn't_ talk like Alex. The real Alex would have launched into overdrive on that topic – a flurry of scientific jargon and condescending explanations, all the while making it very clear that he was dumbing down _his genius_ for mortal ears. Truncating it, glossing over anything, hell, _writing it off_ – her brother would have taken that sort of description as a personal insult. She still didn't totally grasp what he'd said, but his blunt words had reinforced another point. _He doesn't behave like him._

Maybe simple amnesia explained all of the changes. Maybe it didn't.

But the other option… it didn't sting. It didn't hurt. It _loomed_. It was a giant abyss that stretched before her like the maw of some great monster, pitch black and creeping forward by the second. And she didn't want to know what was inside -

She didn't realize she had been backpedaling until she nearly tripped into the sofa. "Alex, I - I need time to think. This is… I just…"

"We're not done yet," he confessed, his silver-blue eyes stricken and strangely hollow. "There's still more. There was one more secret left to find."

He was right, he was right, she didn't want to know any more, didn't want to think of what could be worse than an impostor living in her brother's cast-off skin –

"Go on," the reporter in her whispered.

And he continued his account, sounding much more subdued. There was an undercurrent of rigid desolation in his voice, the aural equivalent of a prisoner marching to the gallows.

"I did what the contact advised. And actually, yeah, it was a trap. But it wasn't really a trap, because he told me they were working on something. Technically. He didn't tell me they were deploying it on the assembled soldiers at their meeting. Or that it turned out there were two new weapons, not one. Bloodtox and supersoldiers. Can't say I liked either, but I managed all right and got away. Bloodtox is a poison that kills infected tissue upon contact, but doesn't react with anything else. Supersoldiers, I'm sure you've seen pictures."

Her response was on autopilot. "The guys on steroids, right?"

"Diluted Blacklight virus steroids, but yeah, pretty much. I wasn't exactly happy with the guy after that, but I still needed information, and he seemed to know a lot about what was going on. He told me some more about Bloodtox, and where Blackwatch was about to deploy it. He wanted me to take their plans apart.

"I didn't want to destroy the blowers. They finally had a true shot against Redlight, and I was taking it away."

His eyes were distant, gazing upon some past atrocity that only he could see.

"But that stuff could kill me too, and if I let it spread, I was going to end up trapped. Prey. Was I right to do it? Probably not. But that was the lead my contact gave me, and I didn't know what else to do. I went into the ten or so blocks Blackwatch controlled and destroyed their machinery. Obliterated half of the city's hope at getting out of a disease-induced hell. Saved my own hide. I just don't know. When you were gone, when I didn't know if you were safe and there was nothing I could do to help you…" He trailed off. "Everything just felt kind of empty. I don't know how to describe it, or what it was. I'm glad it didn't last.

"Then Blackwatch started trying to use Bloodtox to drive out Greene from underground. Which was fine by me, since I wasn't going to get any shots at her while she was holed up. I escorted a pumper down to Times Square and guarded it while it got to work – Blackwatch stopped being dumbasses for once and figured out I was actually helping them, but it didn't last. Anyway, the stuff worked. Greene surfaced. And… well, she wasn't exactly a zombie college kid anymore.

"Times Square turned into hell in seconds. Greene went and morphed herself into this giant tentacle-blob thing, a couple of stories tall. It was hard to kill – I couldn't get close without getting thrashed by its tentacles, and it could blow up a line of tanks just by… roaring, or something. Very tough fight, but in the end, I ripped her out of her cocoon and consumed her."

"And what did you learn?" Dana whispered, not trusting her voice to remain steady.

"Huh? Nothing." Alex shrugged. "Not from her. Her memories don't make a lot of sense. It's more than instinct – it was like she was a puppet of Redlight, a mouthpiece, just along for the ride. Moreso than the rest of the Infected. The only thing that was really _hers_ was her concern for Pariah. But I haven't delved into her head much. Don't like it. But no, she didn't have the truth. Not mine.

"I learned something else, though. Operation Firebreak." His brow narrowed. "Now that Elizabeth Greene couldn't be retrieved, General Randall decided there was nothing left in New York City worth saving. They were going to glass Manhattan in a few hours' time."

"I know. Everyone was talking about that explosion for a while, there's a shitload of conspiracy theories involved… I found the truth on some of Blackwatch's erased records." She paused and looked up at him. "You were the one that stopped it, weren't you?"

He couldn't muster up a smile. "Yeah."

Neither could she, but there was a certain level of warmth in her eyes. "I… I'm proud of what you did. I don't know how you did it, but it was brave. I know it."

"I couldn't let them destroy the city," was all he said. "Especially not with you still in it. So I hurried over to the next marked phone booth. My informant told me that he had a way I could get to McMullen. I was starting to get a resistance to Bloodtox; if I let myself get captured, they'd take me straight to him. So I did, and totaled their Bloodtox factory while I was at it. Pretended to falter, put up a fake struggle. Made a few missteps. They fell for it.

"So I waited until they put me on a slab, and then I had some quality time with my old boss.

"McMullen knew what I could do, and he shot himself before I could consume him. But he told me enough. A tease, maybe a justification. A final hint that strung together a series of broken flashes and recreated a memory – the truth that I'd been searching for all along.

"It turns out the person behind everything, the person who made me like this… was Alex Mercer."

Dana sucked in a deep breath – he glanced towards the sound and saw that her eyes were screwed shut. Her face had contorted into a painful grimace and her hands were balled up into fists, as if the knowledge had physically struck her.

"Years into his work at Gentek, Alex Mercer had discovered that people working on project Blacklight were starting to disappear. He feared he was going to be next. He forged a visa, created a new identity for himself, and made some long-term travel plans. He smuggled a vial of the experimental virus he'd worked on out of Gentek as 'insurance', a threat that would grant him safe passage if he got caught. On his way to Penn Station, he encountered Karen Parker, who begged him to listen to reason. He brushed her aside. In the terminal, Blackwatch cornered him. He threatened to release the virus. Blackwatch fired anyways. And as he died, he went through with his last promise. He broke the vial, which killed everyone in Penn Station in the span of a few minutes. And the majority of the virus infested his dying body. It slid through his failing immune system and preserved what little life he had left. Redesigned his tissues and streamlined his cells, recreated him from the inside out. And a few hours later, I woke up for the first time."

He couldn't look at her, didn't want to confirm the disgust and disbelief that had to be scrawled across her features.

He kept talking. It was all he had left.

"Everything after that just sort of fell into place." His tone was hollow, detached. "Found out Cross was the informant over the phone. He knew where the nuclear bomb was, and had a plan to get onto the Reagan, that ship off the coast. Went through with it and boarded disguised as a commander. I killed Randall, but before I could disarm the nuke, one of the soldiers on the ship… well, that hunter-me hybrid that I mentioned earlier? Turns out I hadn't killed it thoroughly enough, and it was disguising itself as a rank-and-file soldier. It tried to eat me, but I managed to bring it down again. But it had wasted too much time; I couldn't disable the nuke before it went off. I had Cross secure it to a helicopter, and I flew off over the ocean… Jettisoned it, but it exploded before I could get any distance from it. I got pretty much destroyed. I was out for a while… Woke up some time later, rebuilt myself from being a splatter on the pavement. Went to find you. You were awake. And we went on together from there."

Dana was silent.

"So," he said softly, picking apart the floor with his eyes, "you know the truth. I'm an overgrown blob of viral protoplasm wearing the skin of the scientist that died to create it – the man that tried to damn the world, the one that started all of this. You and I were never related. I'm not human and I'm not infected, not like anyone else is; I was made to be something else. The ultimate biological weapon. Not a person. Nothing even close to one."

He braved a glance up, only to find that she wasn't meeting his eyes either. "Well," she said slowly. "You weren't lying when you said the truth sucked."

Alex swallowed; he had a lump the size of a hive in his throat.

Awkward silence reigned supreme for a few minutes. He didn't dare break it. It was better than hearing what he'd heard before, what he knew he was going to hear now.

"The worst thing is," she started, "is that it makes sense. I can see him doing it. Fuck, he was my _brother_… but I can see him doing that in Penn Station. I can see him doing that to the world. I'm a horrible person for believing it. But I…"

"You're not," he replied vehemently. "You didn't do any of this. You didn't deserve to get saddled with him –"

She whirled on him. "Don't talk about my brother like that!"

They both flinched, two pairs of blue eyes going wide.

"Fuck, I'm sorry." Her apology came out as a gabble in her haste to take things back; she took two steps forward to make up for their combined cringe away. "I did not fucking mean that. I… I mean, you're not… You're Alex. I shouldn't have said that, I'm just trying to make sense of this, I…"

"But it's true," he said softly. "I'm not your brother."

She just shook her head. "It doesn't feel like it. I didn't mean that. I thought I might have meant it, but I don't. It didn't sound right."

There was another stilted silence.

"If you have his memories… tell me. Did the… the real Alex care about me, then?" Dana asked in a low voice.

Alex hesitated, and her tone sharpened. "Don't bullshit me, Alex. Just tell me the truth."

He wavered and finally caved under her piercing stare. "I… he should have. I think he would have, too – god knows you deserve it – but he just wasn't capable of it. I… your _brother_," and the distinction came out as smoothly as if he were being dragged over a bed of nails, "was a really fucked-up guy. It was like he was the only person that existed, him and his work – and everyone else was sort of a dream, an afterthought. Real, maybe, but not real enough to be worth his time or consideration. I… I think you know that. But... no, Dana. No, he didn't."

"Oh," she replied, voice small.

"I'm sorry," he said, torn – it came out as a whisper.

"It wasn't your fault." But her words came leadenly and without conviction; automatic, and perhaps not really believed. His fault, really – the reality of it, the _understanding_ that your brother was actually long dead and has been replaced by a semi-functioning duplicate could hardly be expected to come overnight. "It wasn't really his, either. I don't remember too much, but he was the only thing that stood between our… mom, and me. He was the one that had to deal with her.

"It was his choice to turn out the way he did," Alex cut in harshly, without thinking. "You lived in that household too, and you grew up_ fine_. More than fine. He grew up and tried to slaughter the world out of spite. Everyone has a choice. And he made his."

Dana flinched. It occurred to Alex belatedly that she hadn't been trying to excuse his actions, but his lack of love for her.

"I'm sorry," he apologized yet again, feeling sick at the transgression but not knowing how to backtrack. "I… I have some issues with the real Mercer and what he did."

"…I guess you would. Even if he… created you, or something?"

"I'm glad to be alive, but the world would have been better off if I hadn't existed. _You_ would have been better off."

"Alex…" The name suddenly tasted strange on her tongue. Or it should have, and it didn't, and that was why everything was subtly off, like a reflection in a trick mirror.

"You're not my brother." She tried out the words, almost as a question. "My brother was emotionally dead. I didn't matter to him. Not much did, but... now he really _is_ dead. But_ you_… care. Unless that was just another act?"

"I'll swear on anything you want me to, Dana; if there's one thing I've ever been honest about, it's that I truly love you. As a sister. Even after I learned that was just another lie."

"A lie…" she repeated, trailing off. Her eyes were fixed at a point on the ceiling, miles beyond him. He didn't like that look. It was empty. Inscrutable. And it belonged to his sister, whose emotions were usually so clear and shining that even _he_ was often able to make them out.

The silence dragged on, past those awkward stretches that often punctuated their time together and into something entirely new. Something that seemed more threatening than any amount of military might or Infected creatures. He watched as she pressed her slim fingers to her temples, apparently lost in thought.

The tension was crushing; his skin prickled. It burned like Bloodtox, killing him bit by bit in a different way. He ached to say something. To beg, to plead. Hell, maybe he could throw himself to the ground in supplication. He was desperate enough.

But what could he say? He knew that his understanding of comfort or encouragement – no, human interaction in general – was abysmal; more often than not, his words ended up making things worse. Hell, his _presence_ made things worse. Maybe letting Dana go was the best thing to do.

His arms were starting to waver, losing cohesion with stress; wanting to form into something he could protect himself with. Those parts of his mind were simpler – they saw the world in black and white, with no objective beyond survival. They couldn't understand a sort of pain that couldn't be driven off with physical force. Maybe that was the way he was meant to live, that letting himself get entangled in caring was just another failure in the works, an evolutionary road to ruin. Everything would be so much easier if he could just _forget_… He gritted his teeth and clamped down on the changes, forcing the small, wiry tendrils back into a facsimile of smooth leather. The last thing Dana needed was to see any more of what he really was.

She hadn't caught his slip-up – the maelstrom of her thoughts had superimposed itself firmly over her eyes.

A lie. A series of lies, all woven up into a massive web of half-truths that splintered like dry timber in the test of fire. She'd crossed the line between comfort and reality, and now she stood teetering at the edge of the chasm beyond.

Her brother – the brooding teenager who'd protected her from her mother during those awful times when she got violent, and then abandoned her later on; the person who'd eagerly taught her to read and write, and then didn't care when she found her calling within those words years later – was dead. He'd died despicably, a criminal. A sociopath. He was dead, and the person she'd been living with for two months was just one of his pet science experiments, his Frankenstein. Her brother hadn't come back to her, hadn't started to care again – it was all just another lie. He wasn't Alex Mercer. He was Zeus. And that was it.

But that final closure to those thoughts wouldn't come. The name didn't fit. It was like trying to shove the wrong key into a lock; a puzzle piece that looked congruent with another but didn't quite match up when put against each other. In her mind's eye, she looked at him and said Zeus, and still thought Alex Mercer. Even though she knew he wasn't, even though he'd admitted it himself.

She tried to see the creature of spiky, matte-black chitin amidst the fiery destruction of the red zone streets, and she saw Alex standing in their apartment, hands stuffed into his pockets, that perpetually lost expression scrawled plainly over his face.

The more she thought about it, the less sense it seemed to make. The person… hell, apparently, he technically wasn't even that – that stood before her wasn't her brother? It was strange and messed-up and there had to be something _seriously_ wrong with her mind, she knew, but it felt like the Alex she'd known since the Outbreak began was the _real _version, and the older version the alter ego. Like this was her brother _now_, and the pale shell, the twisted shadow –_ that_ was Doctor Alexander J. Mercer. Not Alex. Not… not her brother.

She opened her eyes. Exhaled a long, slow breath; let go of those false beliefs and hopeful delusions and watched them vanish into the air. She inhaled, accepted the new truth, and found that those waters weren't as deep and dark as she'd expected. Maybe… maybe it wasn't so hard to live with after all.

"It's going to take some time to get used to, I guess… but it doesn't really change anything, does it?" Dana chuckled weakly. "I mean… hell, I think I already knew it. Have known, for some time."

Her not-quite-brother blinked, hard. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, I didn't _know_ it… but I could feel it." She looked up to him, finally meeting his eyes, and he found that hers were shining, glossy with a sheen of tears. "I… I knew things were different. That you weren't the same. Because… my old brother would have never loved me so much."

He simply stared, face disbelievingly blank. Not comprehending. Not daring to believe that what he was hearing might actually be…

When she abruptly reached up to hug him, Alex could have been hit with several canisters of Bloodtox, every infected monster known to mankind, and a nuclear warhead, and it still wouldn't have changed it from being one of the happiest moments of his life.


	11. The Simplest Things

**Author's Note: A warning. If you don't want to spoil Prototype 2, or you just don't want to read an angry rant, quickly avert your eyes and scroll down until you reach non-bolded writing.**

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><p>…<strong>Oh my god.<strong>

**They murdered him. They utterly destroyed Alex. Shunted a complex character into a generic melodramatic villain role. They turned him into everything he hated. Everything he'd fought against. And they did not explain a fucking thing. The tie-in comics were a terrible attempt at best – a completely redundant self-journey met with unrealistic amounts of depravity that still failed to meet up to the atrocities he'd already seen. Everything I love, everything that made him such an interesting character, they trounced upon. **_**His love for his sister!**_** They made them turn on each other and didn't provide any sort of reason. No tears shed by either party. They adored each other! Dana was the only connection he had!**** Oh my god, I am so upset. **

**At first, I didn't want to touch Prototype again at all. Call me pathetic, but it **_**hurts**_**. I get attached to my characters. And it feels like one of them has died. Heh, he has! Thing is, dying in a blaze of glory is sad, an end, but it's an honorable end. They made sure to grind Alex Mercer bit by bit into the dust before they killed him, because **_**apparently**_**, they couldn't think of a way to make Heller more appealing than Mercer other than retconning everything about the former besides his appearance.  
><strong>

**But I love the first game too much to give up just because the sequel was bullshit. And I'm going to work harder now, for anyone who feels the same as me. Alex Mercer's story cannot possibly end on such an unfitting note. Yeah, it's fanfiction. I'm just another unpublished writer. I write stuff. I read stuff. I pester people for more stuff. But somebody's got to step in where Radical Entertainment failed miserably. I have to do my best and give his character my all. Maybe I can create a shadow of what he deserved. I feel safe in saying that no matter what I do, it cannot possibly be worse than 'canon'. I say it quote-unquote because even I, who worships canon as set in stone, have a hard time accepting P2 as a true continuation. Nothing was right. Nothing was explained. Both Blackwatch and Gentek took up massive idiot balls. And Mercer? He didn't sound like Mercer, talk like Mercer, act like Mercer, plan like Mercer. He didn't have Mercer's ideals. He became a mixture of everything that he had hated – amoral scientist and plague lord. He abandoned his little sister, just like the original Doctor Mercer. And there were **_**reasons**_** he could have done that – falling prey to his own instincts, some residual effect from Greene. But going on an unrealistically depressing soul-searching trip and then deciding that he should take over the world? Seriously? **_**Seriously? **_**He saw so many worse things in Manhattan! And I'm damn sure he had plenty of memories of human goodness that he'd picked up when he went around eating people - even Blackwatch has loved ones, family, children. Why did he even need to find an 'anchor'? He already had Dana! ****So I'm going to try my best to shunt that horrible phantasm of possibility into the back of my mind and focus on a Mercer that follows Prototype's continuity.** **Yeah, yeah, mine's probably lighter and fluffier than Prototype 1's Mercer. He's still a metric fuckton closer to the mark than the impostor that showed up in his clothes come Prototype 2.**

**Seriously, did the devs hate Mercer or something? Why did Heller deserve his cute fluffy bunny and Mercer didn't? What made Heller's actions in the second game any more righteous than Mercer's in the first? Mercer is decried as a mass-murdering monster, but all intentional civilian kills are entirely on the player – the cutscenes and main storyline implied you went after WoI targets, who weren't **_**universally**_** bad people, but also acted as if Alex was gaining a conscience over the game's course – and Heller has the exact same cruelty potential as Alex did. Players are doing the exact same power trips in Prototype 2 that they did in the first. So what makes Heller the better guy? The fact that he's got a wife and kid? Right, let's just forget about Dana, and the fact that an apocalyptic virus wearing Alex Mercer's skin cared exponentially more about her than her real brother did. Honestly… Alex's actions in the first game are more excusable than Heller's in the second. He had no memories, no moral base, no human guidelines – because he wasn't human. He never was. Physically **_**and **_**mentally, he was a predator – something that didn't understand humans at all. Heller… is not like Alex was. The second game ignored a very important dynamic – the Blacklight virus does not change you, it **_**recreates**_** you. (But then again, it ignored pretty much everything else besides gory murder, too) It wasn't just amnesia in Alex's case – his entire personality was rewritten. But Heller is essentially a human with tentacle steroids. There's nothing to imply that his mind isn't exactly the same as it was before he was infected. He'd lived his whole life among people, inevitably seeing them as equals, friends, people with **_**lives**_** – and he slaughtered everyone in his way regardless. Hell, he seemed pretty creepily into his powers – a lot more blasé about the whole package than Alex ever was.**

**It may take a little time for me to get my muse back in order after all of this crap. But given that you're reading this, I've probably gotten over it by now. Enough to get moving, anyway.**

**I guess this story is officially AU now… uh. -pushes NotDead!Cross down and kicks him under my dresser- Well, it's more AU than it was before, anyway. I'd like to note that I am **_**not**_** changing any of my views in accordance with new information. Oh god no. Prototype 1 was the story I fell in love with, not 2. Heller isn't in this story, nor am I changing Alex's personality as it is here – I think that'd invalidate nearly everything I've written up until now. Or how Blacklight functions – Prototype 1 failed to explain much, so I hashed out something workable from what I observed. The only thing I may add from Prototype 2 is some new moves, because if Heller could pull them off, so could Alex. Honestly, though, I don't even want to think about that game. So consider this an AU that stems from two changed premises – Cross didn't die, as the Supreme Hunter was masquerading as somebody else on the Reagan, and Dana woke up immediately after Greene died (thus giving Alex no incentive to leave the city). Or whatever the hell happened there, because P2 failed to explain why Alex just up and left his sister unprotected to go on a... I'm not going to get into it again. Oh, and Alex isn't a crazy sadist fuck because Activision can do something anatomically unlikely with itself.**

**Seriously, guys. Thanks for ruining the most amazing character I've stumbled upon in six years. I really appreciate it because we have a new game that has a couple new moves and a bigger map with better graphics. At one point, I was upset that the PC version was delayed. Yeah, I cancelled my preorder. I don't want to acknowledge your PoS 'canon' any more than I have to. No way in hell are you getting my money after that.**

**Readers, I apologize for the swearing. I'm… worked up about this. Writing is srs bsns.**

**Anyways, ANs without any chapter attached are ridiculously disappointing, so here, have a chapter.**

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><p>Sprawled out on Dana's couch – technically his, but he tended to think of the entire apartment as hers – was a relatively common place for Alex Mercer to find himself in.<p>

Sprawled on the couch and watching TV was not.

He considered television an utter waste of time. After all of the lies and propaganda he'd seen Blackwatch put out, the patriotic bullshit the papers tried to print in a halfassed attempt to convince the masses that they weren't completely helpless, he had no faith in the veracity of the news, and it seldom told him anything he didn't already know anyway. Shows about fictional characters were even worse; pointless strings of information on people and events that didn't actually exist. It was beyond him why the many _real_ people he'd consumed were so transfixed by contrived characters and their fabricated lives. He already had enough vicarious lives to keep track of. And whoever invented the idea of a commercial was going to die horribly if Alex ever met him.

As for special effects, he was thoroughly unimpressed. He made more satisfying explosions ten times a day on your average Tuesday. Half of them happened without even trying.

But this time, he didn't really mind. Truth be told, he wasn't paying attention to the screen at all. After a few minutes spent clinging to each other, a few minutes where none of the world's madness could even think of intruding, Dana had brightly decided it was a good idea for a little family time, and while Alex had no idea what the hell that was supposed to mean, he was in too much of a good mood to care. Dana hadn't rejected him. Dana knew everything and still wanted him around. That uncertainty, maybe even a little self-loathing, that had plagued him for so long was now smoke in the wind, and nothing else had changed.

He rolled his head to look over at her. She was in the kitchen, rummaging around in the fridge for something. A bag of chips was already sagging on the counter, spilling a few out onto the dusty wood – even during a zombie apocalypse, Dana was adamant about having a steady supply of snacks. Her wrath was considerably more terrifying than the zombies, so he meekly undertook a large portion of her shopping runs without complaint.

Truthfully, he was glad to do them anyways; the trips she did take on her own were often at her heavy insistence. He _hated_ stores with a passion, and he'd be lying if he claimed that he had never just bolted and stolen all of his goods when faced with the daunting prospect of standing in the checkout line for _another damn minute_. Really, he was doing everyone a favor – the alternative probably involved him losing his head and dismembering everyone in his way, then threatening the cashier at clawpoint for taking so damned long. He wasn't patient, and he did _not_ like people – it wasn't his fault if they were all going to mill around like there wasn't a pissed-off viral abomination in their midst that did _not_ have the time to listen to their inane gabbing.

But Manhattan wasn't safe, even before he'd brainlessly cleared the way for a second Outbreak. He'd clamp down on his instincts and bear standing around in a claustrophobic, packed area full of delicious but off-limits prey for a quarter of an hour if it meant keeping his sister out of harm's way. She often complained that she wanted to go out and get some fresh air, but he hated the idea of her wandering the streets without his protection – not when he'd seen the warzones that those streets often became, not when he'd watched Blackwatch gun down screaming civilians at the merest suspiscion of infection. He was willing enough to go out for walks with her, doing his utmost to tolerate the crowds, but she didn't like him wearing any form besides his own, and on any of those instances where they did go out together, he was always paranoid that a military patrol would recognize him and start a firefight with her in the crossfire. Alex grudgingly allowed her some leeway, and he suspected she often went out anyways when he wasn't around to protest, but if there was a hive anywhere near Harlem, those shopping trips were _his_, damn it. He did sympathize with the feeling of being cooped up, but it was for her own good. He wasn't going to lose her over something so preventable.

After a few seconds, she seemed to find what she wanted; a round container of some dip. It had a tangy, sour scent to it that briefly curled his lip, but he let it slide, wholly aware that it was just another one of those inevitable gaps between himself and humanity. She made it very clear that she found his idea of food every bit as disgusting as he often found hers. Whenever he thought she'd finally come home with something vaguely palatable, she always went and _cooked _it. It baffled him.

She fixed a bowl of chips and dip, and he slid over on the couch to accommodate her. After a moment's hesitation, she leaned into him; the gentle contact was blissfully warm and required no restraint. Even his body, the virus – whatever lay beyond that murky divide in his mind that separated his conscious thoughts from his instincts – understood that she was _good_. Somebody he would never and _could _never hurt.

"Jesus, you're always so _hot_," she observed a second later, snuggling closer. "You're like a portable space heater or something. But squishier."

She was dozens of times squishier than him, and he would have readily argued that in comparison to himself, a space heater was the more cuddly of the two, but she was _Dana_. She got some exceptions where he was concerned, so he just shrugged, still marveling at the novelty of prolonged contact that didn't involve grabbing somebody by the neck and either slamming them against the pavement or eating them.

"So, anything you wanna watch?" He shook his head; it was all the same to him. She muttered something about apathy and fruitcakes, and flicked through some channels, her fingers skimming over the remote as adroitly as manipulated her keyboard. Eventually, she settled on something with a British guy and a phone booth. He wasn't really paying attention – Dana was far more important than whatever was on the screen. False characters and false lives - he had enough of those. She was real. She was everything.

"It feels weird, you know?" she said suddenly. "Like, it should feel weird, but it doesn't. And _that_ feels weird. But I don't really care, I think. It doesn't… I mean, I thought that maybe we'd have to get to know each other all over again, like we weren't really brother and sister. Like it made you someone else. But you're just Alex."

"It's a lot better than I'd hoped for," he admitted. "I thought you were going to run away. Or chase me off. Or start trying to beat me up with your monitor."

"My computer is worth way too much for that." She rolled her eyes and swatted him, but there was no malice behind the act. "You should have told me sooner, dumbass," she chided. "It kind of ticks me off that you think so little of me sometimes."

"I don't; I swear, I don't. You're amazing, Dana. I just don't get how you're so…" He frowned, searching for the word. "Compassionate, I guess. I mean, I knew you were for putting up with me at all, but I didn't know how much you could handle. I saw Karen Parker convince herself I was a monster; I saw Ragland flinch every time I opened my mouth, like I was gonna kill him for not doing a good enough job. I just couldn't face seeing the same thing with you. I'm sorry, I just... didn't want to risk it."

He hated the words even as he spoke them, hated the admission and weakness and cowardice, but the truth was, he _didn't understand_ – didn't comprehend how a flinch or a stuttered word could manage to hurt every bit as much as a wave of concussive heat, poison, a severed limb. It was a different kind of hurt, something he couldn't locate; pain he couldn't shrug off or sweep away and repair. And it was incapacitating. He had feared this not-quite-tangible pain more than he'd balked at nigh-certain suicide; flying the nuke away from the city had been a far easier decision than mustering up the courage to admit his identity. He knew it was detrimental and irrational – human thoughts and human feelings that had somehow gotten tangled up in his chimeric mess of reactions – but he could no more cast them aside than he could change what he was, and maybe Dana could explain _why_.

"Alex…" Dana had no idea what to say to that. Neither version of Alex Mercer had ever been very open with their feelings, to the point where it was easy to forget either had them at all. She had wondered sometimes if her brother even _did_. But she'd seen how the news, hell, the rest of the world viewed her… okay, he wasn't her brother, but he _was_ her brother, damn it. She wasn't changing how she felt about that. She'd seen how the world saw him, but she hadn't thought it had bothered him. He'd seemed pretty indifferent to everyone who wasn't her and didn't belong to Blackwatch.

But if he wasn't… She didn't want to think about how it might feel. She wasn't a very social person, although nowhere near to the same degree as her brother, but the thought of being cut off – and _reviled_ – by the entire human race was daunting and… _scary_. Especially since _she_ knew he wasn't as heartless as the world painted him. He was just… ugh, how _could _she explain it? It barely made sense, even to her. She knew he had blood on his hands, and he was unrepentant about a lot of it. Now that she knew – not understood, not yet, but knew – that he wasn't really human, a lot of his quirks and complete confusion when it came to normalcies made chilling sense. He was a killer, yes, one with murky morals at best and positively terrifying abilities. He was something that had been _created _to kill. But he was also a quiet, awkward idiot older brother – stubborn, brash, obnoxiously overprotective. And she had never felt more _wanted_ in her entire life.

Did he, though? Did he have any idea how much it had _meant_ to her to suddenly have her brother back, the brother she'd known before he'd grown up and left her? It meant so much that apparently, finding out that none of it was entirely true didn't actually change things. She'd had friends in college, had friends along her line of work, but at the end of the day, she'd been _alone_. And moving to Manhattan to reconnect with her only family had worked out in the most twisted way possible. The most wonderfully twisted way.

Cuddling up to Alex might have been a good response, even if she wasn't sure he'd appreciate it, but she was already doing that. Which left…

"Chip?" she offered out of habit – one that, all things considered, was astonishing in that it hadn't yet been stamped out. As always, he declined, biomass churning uncomfortably at the thought of wrapping around that fried yellow thing, doused in that weird, whitish paste, flecked with plant matter and glistening with grease.

His momentary revulsion was lost on her. Instead of seeming disappointed or sad, as she always did, she had a rather thoughtful look. She stared at the TV blankly, her bright eyes not following the characters at all. After a bit of thought and another second's hesitation, her mouth opened. "Is this another one of those weird things that you were trying to hide?"

There was no point in hiding it anymore. "Sort of."

She noisily bit into the chip he'd turned down, and almost as an afterthought, glanced back at the fridge. "Why won't you eat anything, anyways?"

"I can't." He chewed on his lip – Dana had been unbelievably tolerant of everything, but he still wasn't comfortable telling her all about his weird shit. "I don't really have a working digestive system – anything I swallow just kind of sits in me until I actively break it down. And it's kind of hard to do that unless I'm consuming it along with something alive." Like clothing or metal appliances on a person, but mentioning that aloud was pushing things.

His feeder tendrils were a very instinctive reaction, and he wasn't really sure how he formed them – they just sort of _happened_ when he was hungry or there was something edible within arm's reach, and he could choose to repress or release them from there. He didn't know how to create them unless his body wanted them to form, though; a fact he'd actively realized the first time Dana had expressed distaste at his dietary habits. Thank god he'd had the foresight to try it out when she was asleep. By the time he'd found some homeless victim to desperately consume, he hadn't even been seeing straight. And the staggering probably would have tipped her off that something was wrong.

It probably said something about his chances of ever adapting to human society, that he found a hamburger floating around in his midsection more painful than taking a rocket to the same area. But he wasn't really concerned, as long as hamburgers remained more easily evitable hazards than javelin launchers.

"Oh." She frowned. "That sucks. …Okay, honestly curious here. Why can you only eat stuff that's alive? Totally trying to ignore your idea of a snack… I just want to get this out of the way. Maybe I can help. I mean, let's face it, Alex, I don't think you've been looking for alternatives."

"I don't really… eat." He hesitated, trying to choose his words carefully. "I think the virus in me sorts of turn stuff into myself and then… sucks it in? It's like infection, but controlled. It can't make dead cells do anything, so I can't consume anything that's been dead for over a few minutes. Believe me, I wish I could. But the stuff you call food is useless to me. I can't really do anything with it. Even if I do dissolve it, it's not biomass; it doesn't make me any less hungry."

"Sounds nasty." She grimaced and picked up another chip, biting off the end with a loud crunch. His biomass tingled as some of the crumbs landed on his pants; with the arm that wasn't slung around his sister's shoulders, he brushed them off. "Makes me kind of glad I can do this, though, you know? Well, I guess you don't. But I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't eat chocolate. That stuff fucking makes the _world go round_."

It was a pretty transparent attempt to get off the subject, but Alex had been trying to do that anyways. "I'm pretty sure that's gravitational forces, actually." All of the scientists in him seemed to think it was pretty elementary, and there were no mentions of chocolate anywhere in the formulas. "The planet's orbit-"

She sighed and waved a hand, cutting him off. "You wouldn't know a figure of speech if it exploded in your face."

He frowned. "Should I be worried?"

"Case in point." Another sigh. "It's kind of funny how you do that, though. Like you just don't _get_ things. It… I don't know, it's weird. I'll do stuff that's so ordinary I don't even think about it, and you just look at me like I have two heads or something."

"Tell me about it." Alex leaned back. "I'm trying, but… well." He tapped his temple, frowning. "I have all these memories, but I don't get _why_ people do stuff. What compels you to do what you do. It just doesn't make any sense."

That elicited a small smile from her. "Says the sentient virus-thing." He shifted and looked quickly at her, worried at the use of terminology, but she looked more teasing than anything else, still comfortably leaning against him.

She caught his discomfiture. "It's kind of hard to think of you like that," she assured him. "I mean, the Black Plague doesn't walk around in a hoodie and leather jacket. And it definitely doesn't bring me home chocolate." Her voice turned softer. "But hey, if it's too soon, it's okay. I won't."

And she received a small smile in turn; faint and tentative, but it did wonders for his normally stony face. "Thanks."

They lapsed into silence for a few minutes.

"God, it must have been annoying," she remarked suddenly. "Like that week I was trying to get you to eat dinner. I thought you just hated my cooking. Oh!" She giggled. "Remember that time I wanted you to take a shower?"

"You tried to lock me in the bathroom and started throwing a tantrum when I asked you to let me out," he recalled, with just the slightest hint of a long-suffering undertone. Clearly he'd gotten over the incident.

"And you just unscrewed the doorknob, broke out, and escaped out the window." She laughed again. "And then you showed up the next day, clinging to the wall outside with your head through the window, and you wouldn't come back inside until you'd gotten me to promise I wasn't going to threaten you with the showerhead again. Haha… I guess you wouldn't like shampoo, would you?"

"Water too." Alex was pretty sure it would take harder stuff than commercial antiseptic to kill him, but he doubted he'd have any fondness for it, and he didn't feel any desire to slather the stuff over his head to find out. Hand sanitizer, he'd already learned about the hard way. Very inconvenient time to blow his cover, too.

"Huh. Hygiene is a deathtrap. Trying to picture Blackwatch arming themselves with Super Soakers and bars of soap now… but yeah, I've been going about this the wrong way, haven't I?" Her voice turned a bit morose. "I thought you were being stubborn about all this stuff. That you'd forgotten how to live and I needed to teach you all over again. I didn't know that you _couldn't_."

"Don't worry about it." He sounded like he meant it; that soft half-smile was still quirking his lips, as though he'd briefly forgotten that he was supposed to act disgruntled and bitter about the world. Dana couldn't help but smile back at this rare trespass of emotion on her brother's face. "Just… no therapists. Please."

She made a face. "I'm still not convinced on that one."

He gave a noncommittal noise at that, something between a grunt and a sigh. _Damn_, he thought. And here he was, thinking he was finally getting off the hook. Things could never just be that easy, could they? 'Dana's ideas' ranked fairly high on his threat list, somewhere above Leader Hunters and below close-range nuclear explosions.

"Hmph. I'm gonna get through to you one day, you big moron." She poked his forehead. "Count on it."

He didn't doubt it. Hell, sometimes he was convinced that no matter how many tanks he smashed through, Dana would always be the more determined of the pair.

Unfortunately for the two of them, even if Alex could relax into a subdued and gentle state for his only family, his body was still a compressed viral engine of power. And it had decided that it was sick of how long he'd spent sedentary. He was made for constant action and violence, and while he was getting a little better at tolerating the apartment, he still couldn't rest for much more than an hour and a half before he started getting edgy. He supposed it was like a person trying to take a nap after ingesting a large quantity of Dana's 'coffee' stuff, except in his case, he was on a permanent caffeine rush. One that made him want to kill things, to boot.

Unable to completely deny his energy, he started to fidget, toying with a loose hem on his jacket's left pocket. How did those things get loose, anyway? The leather-imitating biomass was numb, but he could still sort of distantly feel his nails digging into it as he worried at the imperfect stitching, then surreptitiously remorphed it and patched up the damage around that spot. And then started picking at it again.

A minute or so passed before Dana sighed. "You probably have to go, right? Go out, kill the bad guys. Save the world. Jesus… when did our lives turn into some sort of fucked-up action move? When the hell did we get _used_ to it?"

He couldn't imagine a life that _wasn't _like one. "Probably." Twisting his head, Alex glanced out the closed window. "And I'll come back and you'll still be here." His voice had taken on an oddly wondering note. "Nothing's actually changed."

"Hey, I told you before, remember?" She smiled gently at him as they both stood up. "No matter what happens, you're still my brother."

His brow dipped in confusion, and a tangle of worry gripped his chest. Had she not understood? "But… I'm not your brother?"

She laughed and briefly clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Close enough, stupid."

Her approval coursed through him like sunlight, all warmth and energy without the burn.

She chuckled. "Now get a move on. Can't leave your twisted superhero duties unattended, can you? Show the world what you're worth. I promise, it's a better place than you've been seeing. Someday, you'll get to see that. Someday, the world will get to see _you_."

He'd seen plenty of the world through vicarious memories and still wasn't sure he had a place anywhere in it. And his sister seemed to be clinging to a breed of optimism he'd abandoned before the end of his first week alive – acceptance wasn't anywhere on the table. It didn't matter. As long as the world had Dana, he didn't need any other reasons.

As if sensing his doubt, she gripped his hand and gave it a tight squeeze. "I promise," she repeated adamantly.

He made a valiant attempt at a smile. Like many of his forays into human responses, the action got tangled and muddled somewhere along his neurons; those incompatible, convoluted viral pathways confused and twisted it into an unsuccessful alien mimicry of the real thing. His voice, at least, was a little more obedient, and could have been considered passably soft. "Stick to the promises you can keep… sister."

"Brother," she confirmed. "And I meant what I said, moron!"

His smile turned a shade more real as he left the room. Yeah, that was Dana. 'Backing down' was not a term she was aware of. And for all the arguments and frustration it caused, he didn't think he'd want to see her change.

After closing the door behind him, he made his way to the apartment's roof in his typically inhuman fashion. Dana's views were too black and white, still naïve enough to believe in a clearly defined good and evil. Naïve enough to think that he tread closer to the former – guilt gnawed and his biomass squirmed when he compared his real motives to her trusting assumptions. There was no point in being dishonest with himself. He wasn't a hero – he was a monster that fought against worse monsters. 'Saving everyone' was really just an afterthought that had ended up coinciding fairly well with revenge and hatred. But her faith in him was warm and gratifying, however misplaced it might have been, and he didn't want to dismiss it.

The autumn chill swirled playfully around his skin; with his massive density and unnaturally high temperature, the cold didn't bother him in the slightest. Right now, though, it was unusually refreshing. He felt… strange, but in a good way. Like he could do anything. He cocked his head, glancing at the network of rooftops around him. Now that he thought about it, Harlem seemed like less of a choked, dying mess of concrete and brick, and more like one of those games he sometimes made up to test himself.

On a whim, he bent his knees and thrust himself up into a decent jump. The air rushed past him, curling over his outstretched arms and yanking up the edges of his jacket to trail and flap in the slipstream. The effortless, easy arc carried him neatly to another roof, which buckled slightly at the impact.

It was something he'd done a million times, but everything felt so new, so vibrant. An unfamiliar, giddy laugh bubbled up from his chest. The sheer sense of _freedom_ – the city was _his_. He'd always known it, just like a predator inherently knows its place on the food chain; something he'd accepted without really acknowledging. But now it was bright and energetic, something more than just a means to an end.

Alex took another leap, this time leveling himself into a glide. Marveling at how the air momentarily held him aloft, at how small and faraway the streets and their vexing crowds seemed. Insignificant – not their lives, as was easy to feel in his frustration, but their entire presence. Outside of his awareness, his concern; trapped on the ground while he ambled freely through the sky.

He sprang from rooftop to rooftop randomly, following no pattern or purpose beyond his own momentary whims. He made his way to higher ground just to enjoy a longer fall back down, toying with his acrobatic ability in an increasingly bold display of midair flips and twists.

And all the while, he knew he had someone to go back home to, someone who didn't care about _why_ he could do this. Someone who had looked into him and seen everything – seen things that even he wasn't comfortable with acknowledging – and accepted him anyway. For once, everything he'd been afraid of had turned out to be nothing more than smoke and shadows. And now he was free, for once allowed into at least a little sliver of the light.

It felt wonderful.

This wasn't a test of agility, a gauge on how fast he could travel on varying terrain – this was aimless. Movement for the sake of movement.

It didn't make sense; this was nothing new to him. His speed and inhuman dexterity was the first thing he'd discovered about his new body. And he could draw satisfaction from movement, but only because it accomplished something; never when it was aimless. This served no purpose – he was not hunting down prey or information. He was neither fleeing nor chasing, and he had no destination in mind. He was not honing a skill or testing out new adjustments to his structure. Stranger still was the fact that he couldn't bring himself to care about it.

A muffled series of shocked exclamations rang underfoot as he crashed down upon an apartment's roof, and he couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it as he sprang away – some group of random humans doing whatever the hell they did with their lives, and suddenly finding the great Zeus using their ceiling as a trampoline. Their expressions were probably priceless.

He paused on top of a high-rise hotel, a tendril of wary confusion managing to worm through this inexplicable, reckless energy. This wasn't like him – he was a creature of purpose. What was he doing? What was this… _feeling_?

After a moment's thought, he laughed again and flipped off the side. The hell with it. If he was going crazy, fine. He didn't care.

He felt like he was on top of the world.

0o0o0

Captain Cross had once thought that Hope, Idaho had been hell. He missed those days.

Manhattan was a nightmare. A worst-case scenario. Exactly the sort of thing that they were trying to prevent. Massive population concentration, center of world commerce, travel destination, densely packed crowds… Idaho wasn't even worth thought after that. A hick town in the middle of nowhere. Isolated. An assault rifle to New York City's atomic bomb. The situation's only saving grace was that its island location and the disease's hydrophobia made quarantining it mercifully easy, but that was little comfort to the island's one and a half million residents.

And he knew it. He also knew that Blackwatch wasn't here to save those one-point-five million people; it was here to stamp out the virus wherever it managed to crop up. Or to escape to.

He'd done his duty. It wasn't something he was proud of, but he wasn't a fool. A significant portion of Manhattan's citizens had been doomed as soon as Elizabeth Greene had broken out of her containment. If Blackwatch had taught him anything, it was that it was better to salvage what could be saved rather than waste time and effort trying to help those that had already been lost. It was ironic. Penn Station had been a scare, but it had saved the world in its own right. Engineered to be as lethal as possible, Blacklight was too effective, an evolutionary dead end - it had burned itself out, killing everyone in the vicinity too quickly for it to spread. Save one unexplained anomaly, anyway... But it had given them the time to lock down the borough, and by the time that Redlight had taken root, it was effectively contained – at the very least, long enough for them to strike back at it.

It had been close; they had nearly been overwhelmed. Their various computer tests' predictions had been unanimous; Redlight had almost broken free. Unofficially enlisting Zeus's service was not something he had enjoyed, and it would see his hide on a tanning rack if it ever got out. But really, it had just been another application of what Blackwatch had taught him – use whatever means necessary. And maybe his own situation had made him stupidly sympathetic towards the Blacklight virus – it was clear that he was the only person who'd ever considered that Mercer might actually be a sapient being – but it had all worked out in the end. Focus the man-turned-monster's boundless rage away from Blackwatch just long enough for them to find a way to drive Greene out, then set Mercer loose on her. When she'd surfaced in Times Square as a gargantuan betentacled behemoth, he'd started to doubt his gambit. But he was a strategist, and the outcome became clear long before the fight wrapped itself up – Mother was packing more power, but the form she'd chosen couldn't have been less suitable for her last stand. She was a giant, immobile target, and Zeus was too goddamn fast for her to catch. He'd actually gained a bit of respect for Mercer then, when the brute demonstrated that he was capable of fighting intelligently when charging head-on didn't suffice. And alongside rows upon rows of military tanks – probably the first and last time they wouldn't be firing upon each other – he'd whittled Greene down enough to kill her with his usual savagery.

Then Firebreak. Randall had trumped him on that one. He'd been certain that stopping Greene would behead the Infection, enough for the city to be considered salvageable once more. He'd met the truth with a mixture of disbelief and disgust. The General had been refraining from glassing the city because he wanted to _recover_ Greene, not remove her; now that she was gone, he had no compunctions about cauterizing Redlight for good. It was a blatant violation of everything Blackwatch fought for, and it was at that point when Cross realized that he'd rather be a traitor than stand by and let the city burn. And he'd planned to distance himself from the Blacklight virus as quickly as he could, but once again, the crazy bastard really looked like the only option he had left.

But if Randall was full of surprises, so was Mercer. He'd assumed that the virus would cooperate as far as getting onto the Reagan – it was an appeal to survival and information, things even Blacklight could understand – but he honestly hadn't expected him to volunteer to commit suicide. When Mercer's helicopter had vanished into the distance, deadly cargo in tow, he'd felt a mixture of bitter amusement and regret. The sociopathic, mass-murdering viral monster had been more invested in protecting humanity than Randall had ever been. What did that say about Blackwatch?

But it was still necessary. No matter how twisted the last line of defense was, it was still the only thing that stood between humankind and bloody disaster. And as blinding light blossomed on the horizon, he saw exactly what he had to do.

He had to change things.

Things after that had been straightforward. He'd been floored upon hearing that Mercer was still alive, but given how everything had transpired, it came as more of an uneasy awareness than an actual threat. He wasn't sure what Mercer would do, now that there was no gripping conspiracy revolving around himself to keep him occupied, but after a week passed with no signs of the Infection resurging, he was satisfied enough that the Blacklight virus wasn't taking the reins from his predecessor. Cross had tracked him down – he looked to be in surprisingly good condition for something that had just surfed on a nuclear explosion – and while Mercer was still as blunt and impatient as ever, they'd worked things out well enough. A mutual agreement to keep out of each other's way and trade favors when necessary. So without the fear that his team was going to get eaten by a bad-tempered viral abomination, he'd done his duties cleaning up the broken city. Sometimes he called ahead for backup; sometimes a surprisingly amenable Mercer would randomly show up and lend a tentacle, although Cross suspected it was more out of boredom than it was the extremely questionable goodness of his heart.

Either way, Blackwatch had finally been close to stamping the poison out for good, just as he'd planned to stamp out the poison from Blackwatch. And his attempts at expelling one had gotten him absolutely _nowhere_ and ended up rekindling the other.

He wasn't sure if he was a suspect or not. He hadn't been contacted for anything more than regular questioning on the incident and mission briefings. Said missions had been rather lower-ranked than he was used to, but he was inclined to think that it was because they were short-staffed rather than being on some sort of probation. He'd covered his tracks flawlessly, if nothing else. If anything was found, _Mercer _would be the one implicated, not him, although that had the potential to get back to him too. He doubted it, though – dealing with Pariah was eating all of Blackwatch's attention. It was ironic, that that might have actually been what saved his hide.

Not that it was much of a good thing. It was also the reason he was tromping towards a Hive. Irritatingly unspecified 'disturbances' had been occurring around there, and headquarters wanted it cleared out so samples could be taken. What constituted a disturbance beyond the usual gruesome death caused by the disease?

He wasn't too enthusiastic about finding out.

The Wisemen weren't alone for this assignment – another, lower-ranking platoon had been assigned to follow them. Looking over the assembled men, all nearly identical to each other, he couldn't help but think that they'd been distributed to him as meat shields.

He almost laughed. That was what your _job_ was in Blackwatch. Kill as many things as you can before you get destroyed. Things were different back in the spec ops deployments, the undercover missions abroad, but Redlight was an endless enemy; your worth was in terms of how much of the job you could get done before you slipped.

He sized up the leader of the other squad. He'd gotten used to not seeing anyone's face during work, but it did make identifying anyone he wasn't duly familiar with difficult. Were it not for the name he'd been given – Lieutenant Kozlowski – he wouldn't have known that he'd met the man once before, in a conference. He'd struck him then as a relatively uninteresting man, tall and muscled but not handsome, a little too twitchy to seem suited to his station. The only thing that had made him stand out from the generic Blackwatch profile was his weapon preferences; apparently, the man liked to use two guns at once and was still a pretty accurate marksman. It was visible now, with two assault rifles slung from the lieutenant's sides rather than the usual one. Cross preferred to keep one hand free for close combat, but he did have a better chance at surviving in close quarters than anyone else could reasonably expect.

The two teams didn't mingle; shared experiences and learned mistrust kept them among their own members, checking their gear and psyching themselves up as they moved towards their target.

"Hah," Winder crowed. "Another beautiful fuckin' day in the Corps. Weather's a balmy forty-five and I am _ready to blow shit up_. How ya doin' down there, newbies?" He looked sideways, where the other platoon was marching in two rigid lines. "Ya think you can keep up with the big shots?"

Behind his gasmask, Lieutenant Kozlowski ground his teeth. "As your superior officer, shut the fuck up, Corporal."

Cross was frowning. "We're all on the same team here, Winder. Eyes on the prize."

"Oh, I am," Winder agreed. "Cannot fuckin' wait to send some skins up in flames."

Unlike usual, Detwiller couldn't share his teammate's violent enthusiasm. There was an uneasy feeling in his gut, and he was relatively sure it didn't come from the morning's shitty field rations. Obviously, there was some elbow room for trepidation. The Infection was picking up speed again, and Pariah and Mother were lurking out there somewhere – two boogeymen entrenched in hostile territory and liable to appear at any moment. And Zeus, he mentally added a second later, but after watching Pariah bring that monster to its knees… He could have laughed. You knew that things were bad when Alex Mercer was no longer at the top of your threat list, _and_ you started to believe that maybe it wasn't lying about sides after all. Maybe. He wouldn't trust that monster to accurately tell him the color of the sky on a clear day, but he doubted that it liked Pariah all too much after that horrific, disgusting _thing_ he'd witnessed.

Good instincts were the mark of a successful soldier, and Detwiller had learned to trust his implicitly. It wasn't a sixth sense like some whack-job idiots liked to boast. It was just experience and raw awareness, all focused on the simplest and most paramount of goals – keeping alive. He hadn't really learned to appreciate it – hell, to even pay any thought to it at all – before two months ago. Hardened as he was, he still had to hold back a shudder at the memory of that nightmare; getting called in as backup, Cross wounded and the target more pissed off than hurt. He'd been reloading his grenade launcher during a brief lull in the fight – the slippery bastard had leapt out of sight, and he'd taken advantage of that to shove some 40x46 grenades into the ammunition chamber as quickly as he could. His neck had started prickling, enough to hurt – the next thing he knew, he'd tossed the launcher aside and thrown himself to the ground, just as Mercer's tentacle had speared through where his neck had been an instant ago and impaled two men behind him. The top of his helmet still bore a shallow scar from the close call, but he didn't need it to remind himself.

Some moments were hard to forget.

It wasn't luck that had kept him alive – it was his skills, himself. It wasn't something to be proud of. It was just a fact. And the same infallible thing was now telling him that he had no business getting cocky.

So when Winder glanced at him for support, he remained silent instead of making one of his usual pithy remarks. After a few moments, the other senior Wiseman turned away with a grunt, clearly dissatisfied. Detwiller drummed an impatient rhythm on his launcher's barrel as they walked, skin crawling with impatience. He wished everyone would shut up and get this all over with.

He could understand Winder's derisive comments, though. All Blackwatch recruits were tough, but after spending so many years of his career among the elites, comparing the lower ranks' grit to what he was used to was like comparing the average Marines to Blackwatch. Some of the men following Kozlowski were speaking to each other rather than surveying the surrounding streets, and a few others were hyperalert, whirling around with weapons raised at the slightest sound that rang out-of-place. Compared to his team's silent, efficient unison, it was pathetic.

Cross was an impeccable leader who cared for and was revered by his men, but he wasn't soft. The consideration and concern he had for his team was an equal trade for the rigor he demanded from them. The Wisemen didn't get their reputation as the elite without reason, and being transferred to the squad didn't suddenly transform you from average to skilled. The team was constantly on their toes because it had near-literally been drilled into their brains.

The captain, he knew, did not care much for rank. He didn't enjoy attitude, but was far more willing to excuse it than any other leader Detwiller had served under. Experience was beneficial, but a lack of it didn't disqualify a potential recruit from Cross's attention. He looked for adaptability. Instinct. Potential. Talent, either raw or honed. Stoicism. Levelheadedness. Quick thinking. And loyalty. And Detwiller, like every other member of the Wisemen, was here because he fit at least some of those criteria, and invariably the last.

Cross, meanwhile, was keeping pace with Kozlowski, if silently. There wasn't much to say. They were there to get the job done, not to make friends or talk about – what? What small talk was there to be made, anyways? His weekly killcount? How freakishly red the sky was?

"Getting close to the site," the lieutenant warned. He pulled a small device from his belt. "Going to run a scan, pick up the concentration. Probably going to be close-quarters fighting – stick to protocol, and for fuck's sake, your suit is an extension of your body. It gets compromised and you're as good as dead, so no stupid mistakes, and… the fuck?"

Kozlowski looked down at the scanner, which had started to flash. Frowning to himself, he pressed a few buttons. The blinking ceased, but restarted about ten seconds later. He growled and gave it a violent shake. "Useless piece of crap."

Cross cast a sideways glance at him. "Hm?"

"It's picking something up, all right. But it's also saying there's a strain it can't identify. Thought they updated this shit?"

The captain was intrigued. "Let me take a look."

Sure enough, there was a glaring unknown along the other listed concentrations of Redlight's better-known strains. He recalibrated the scanner again, just as the lieutenant had done, but the results came up the same. It wasn't a significant amount compared to the more familiar mutations of Redlight present, but Cross wasn't pacified. Preparation and strategy was what kept them ahead of the Infected; unknown variables were what got people killed.

"Hmph," he grunted, handing the scanner back to Kozlowski. "Keep your guard up. I don't like this."

The lieutenant laughed bitterly at that. "Since when can you ever say you fucking _like _what's going on here?"

As they marched closer to the Hive, Infected began to appear, then became frequent. The Walkers were neatly picked off before they could get too close, but as soon as more hard-hitting monsters began to appear, the battle would begin in earnest.

And they were getting close. They were less than two blocks away from the Hive now, the top of the overgrown nightmare of a building visible above the rows of abandoned retail stores. It stood out like a sore, some giant pustule of the city's corruption. A man could get used to the _sounds_, the smell of rotting meat, hell, even get accustomed to looking up and seeing the sun hanging in a crimson sky. But Cross doubted that he was ever going to be able to look at this scene and not feel disturbed at the… wrongness, the twisted, perverse face of the Infection. And for as many times as it had saved his life, his skin _crawled_ whenever he looked at Redlight's monstrous creations, because he knew that a part of it was inside of him, flowing through his veins and entrenched in his cells. Not quite the same virus that ripped men apart and turned them into beasts under a single guiding will, but close. Too close. Different, but still a part of this horrible experiment-gone-wrong.

Mercer had a different strain too, some version of Redlight warped by half a decade's worth of genetic alterations. And that wasn't much of an assurance, because he looked human enough, until you met his gaze and realized that he was looking at you _hungrily_, that any pretense of civility he could muster was stretched taut over the mind of a ravenous predator. Those eyes never really changed – he'd seen Mercer irritated and dispassionate and apprehensive and furious, but that look that he could only describe as that of a starving caged animal was always there. And that was only a window into what the creature really was – Zeus could make himself look human, but Blacklight had taken the dying Doctor Mercer and recreated him as anything but. Fuck, the bastard _ate_ people! He'd witnessed Mercer wounded before, had seen writhing tentacles and flowing ooze where muscle and bone should have been. He'd seen the jacket and jeans harden into armor plating at a moment's notice, seen his sleeves erupt into spikes and tentacles and bulging muscle. It wasn't even something that the Blacklight virus seemed to be entirely in control of. More and more often lately, he'd watched an agitated Mercer pace back and forth, his arms shivering between human and… whatever lay beneath. But it really just told the captain what he already knew about Blacklight. Any attempt at normality was nothing more than a shell over something primal and inhuman.

Mercer wasn't a part of the virus's main initiative, the hivemind, the gestalt will to erase humanity and replace it with cancerous monsters. But that was really all that could be said for him. It didn't make him sane, or good; didn't come _close_ to making him human. There were _times_ that Cross thought he could see a glimpse of remorse in those hungry eyes, hear concern about collateral damage when he commented on the captain's battle plans. The pure reverence in his gravelly voice whenever he spoke of his sister. A start, maybe. But it didn't change the fact that what had become of Alex Mercer was a monster in the most literal sense of the word.

He hadn't questioned his humanity for a long time, but seeing the virus fully manifestated now, assimilation and unfettered destruction, Cross couldn't help but second-guess himself. Couldn't help but wonder at what line that he himself tread.

His head snapped up, along with every other soldier in position, as a series of eerie screeches rang out. They weren't a Hunter's roars, sounding more like raptors or bird of prey than anything else. But they were far too loud and close to be the fattened crows that always circled overhead. A glance behind him proved that he hadn't merely been imagining it.

He turned to two of his men. "Keffler, Sullivan – scan for whatever made that. It's probably nothing, but I want to be sure."

The indicated Wisemen got to work, flicking through the modes on their scopes as they checked the area. A quarter of a minute passed in relative silence as the two tried to locate whatever might be behind the sound.

A scream rang out at the back of Kozlowski's line, and things crumbled from there.

Cross whirled. Three thin, reddish creatures had appeared from nowhere and were in the middle of tearing some unfortunate man to pieces. Weapons were raised almost immediately, but the damn things were too close. Somehow, they'd managed to get right in the middle of their position without being noticed. _The fuck…_?

Somebody took a chance and fired. The shot lodged itself in another soldier's leg, who crumpled with a yelp as the unknown Infected leapt out of the way. It was like a signal; the other two forgot about the dead soldier, dropping and snarling in unison. The captain spent a few seconds trying to blink away the optical illusion before he realized what he was seeing. Claws. Claws that had to be at least a fucking foot and a half long. At _least_.

And then it was like watching Mercer in action again as the fucking things swept through the ranks, butchering the rear of the lieutenant's platoon with frightening ease. Some scattered, shouting, but others weren't quick enough to react and ended up in several pieces on the pavement.

"Get back!" he heard Kozlowski howl. "Get out of range!"

The man could have sounded a little less rattled, but it was sound advice. Cross was already backpedaling, alternating looking behind him and straight ahead as he covered some distance, then reached a decision and started running.

He was a good shot, but the problem with grenade launchers was that they launched grenades. Which explode. He couldn't fire into that clusterfuck without killing any of the men who were fighting back. Of course, very few of the Infected had the decency to properly die when nailed with non-incendiary ammunition, but the captain hated having to hesitate. It never preceded anything good.

More screeching calls echoed from the rooftops. Cross recited a list of swear words in his head as he dashed away, searching for a sheltered spot where he could pause and take aim.

And _of course _he had to momentarily forget that those clawed anorexic fucks weren't the hive's only denizens. The reminder came in the form of the vaguely blade-shaped forearm of one of the more heavily twisted Walkers. He ducked under the swipe and kicked the Evolved in the chest, jogging backwards a few steps to fire upon it. The Infected struggled for the first two shots; upon the third, its toughened skin finally gave, and it let go of whatever life it had left in cauterized pieces.

He jammed the barrel of his launcher into a Walker that was shambling towards him from the side; the metal connected with a wet crack, and the Infected fell away from him, gurgling. Not that it mattered. There were more behind it, beside it; a legion of slowly advancing corpses that didn't realize that they had already died. A week ago, this same crowd would have been strolling the same streets, talking on cell phones, carrying bags of groceries, waving down taxis. Now Redlight had made an army of them, and the only ticket out was to die. Where along the line did they stop being human? Was there a specific point when their independence burned out and they crossed the line from person to monster?

If it was anything like his own experiences, there wasn't.

But he… he was a survivor. He'd chosen his path. He hadn't known what he was getting into – who ever did? – but he'd picked his own future, however different it was from what he'd expected. These were just… people, civilians, the very thing he'd enlisted to protect. Now they were beyond saving. Damn Greene. Damn Pariah. Damn Gentek. Damn…

He was starting to realize just why Alex Mercer loathed his former self so much.

Those thoughts occurred in the span of a few seconds and in the back of his mind – introspection and warfare mixed only slightly better than kindergarteners and sticks of dynamite. He backpedaled furiously, firing off a volley of shots as he went. It was a good thing the mounted weapon was so easy to reload… Abruptly, he backed into something that immediately flinched at the contact, and spun around, expecting to see a soldier.

He didn't.

With a furious hiss, it leapt away, landing splayed and close to the ground in a ferally defensive position. Up close, he could see just how much of an ugly fucker this new Infected thing was. It looked horribly disfigured on all fours, its stubby legs at most half the size of its overgrown, bony arms. The claws were straight but grotesquely long, and they stuck out of its shapeless hands at uneven angles.

It didn't matter if the thing was going to win a fucking beauty pageant or not, though. Cross did not give a shit what it looked like; he wanted to know how to make it die.

_Long claws,_ he noted. _Midrange. _Close combat was a bad idea with this thing, but unless he could get enough distance, using his grenade launcher was going to do just as much damage to him. _Spindly arms, doesn't look too durable. Disfigured legs, but it's faster than it looks._

He was fast, but the circle of chaos around a Hive was a shit place to run blindly; he couldn't keep his eyes behind him and on every other Infected in the area. But swinging with his gun, baton, or his knife wasn't feasible as long as that thing had those damnable claws. Speaking of which, he'd been wasting enough time as it was. The bastard looked ready to pounce.

_The claws…_

He dove to the ground as the thing sprang, arms held wide. Its talons cut through the empty space a foot above his head, whistling shrilly with speed. Cross leapt to his feet, but the Infected had already whirled around, diving in for another, lower attack; he was forced to drop the opportunity in favor of testing just how much he could regenerate.

It snarled when its second charge proved just as inaccurate as the first, sounding just as pissed off as the captain felt. He feinted to the left, then threw himself right as it pounced, but it caught his trick and twisted in midair.

He clenched his teeth as the tips of its claws – maybe less than an inch – tore through his weapon arm; three widely spaced, jagged tears in the muscle. Despite himself, a sharp, pained exhale escaped his throat, but he forced himself to hold his ground with the practiced ease of one who'd shouldered off this sort of wound far too many times before. There was no point in panicking. Attempting to duck out of the way was leaving himself open. His body would heal itself quickly enough, and the agents in his blood would neutralize any would-be transmission of the virus. He'd dealt with far worse than the slice of pain in his arm.

…Fuck it. His eyes narrowed. There was no point in drawing this out.

He lifted his wounded arm and fired off a single shot – at this close range, the explosion treated him to a generous dose of heat and rubble, but he didn't waste time with catching his breath. The mutant Infected hadn't had the forewarning to brace itself, and the blast had thrown it back, if nothing else. It was hard to make out more than silhouettes through the smoke.

He sprinted forward, pulling up his arm. His enemy was rising to its misshapen feet, shaking its head like a disoriented dog. No sooner had it taken its claws off the ground when the captain slammed the edge of his grenade launcher into one of its hands with all the force he could muster. It staggered back, keening, and he struck again. This time, those spindly-looking bones gave way, snapping off two of the three claws and leaving its malformed wrist dangling at a useless angle.

It howled – a horrible, strangled shriek that made his ears throb. It stumbled back a step and dropped down to all fours again – three and a half now, really. Cross wasted no time in lunging in and snapping its other hand, grinding it under his steel-toed boots. It screamed again and jumped back, splitting the fractured digits off entirely.

It hesitated, then decided against fleeing and dove at him again. Cross was not impressed; he didn't bother to drive out of the way. The thing didn't have much force behind it – it crashed into him with barely more momentum than an average human, flailing bitterly at him with useless stumps. The captain's eye twitched. Its high-pitched keening was beginning to grate on his ears. He jammed his shock baton into the creature's torso, and as it staggered, he hoisted it up by the throat.

"Shut the fuck up," he growled, fingers tightening around its neck. With his free hand, he stowed his shock baton and freed his knife, which he plunged into the creature's skull repeatedly until the damned shrieking finally gurgled out.

"…Fucker," he muttered, kicking the body aside. The burn in his right forearm was already fading. Soon enough, it'd just be another scar to add to his collection. But he didn't have the time to spend on some uppity newcomer to the Infected food chain. He had his team to guard.

"Good one, Captain," panted Black. Cross turned sharply to face his subordinate. The man was placing his weight on one side, leaning oddly, but his suit didn't appear breached. Must have been some sort of blunt trauma, which was far less worrying than contact. Another teammate was standing next to him, but without hearing the second man speak, Cross could only hazard a few guesses as to who he was.

"Anything to report?" he bit out, sweeping the area for more immediate threats.

"We've split into pairs, as you instructed." All right, so Black's partner was Sullivan. "No casualties among ours, but we can't keep track of the other squad, sir."

"Good. Keep it up. Retreat if you have to – this is getting messy." Cross raised a hand in dismissal and started off again – there was no time to waste on chatter, and he had to keep tabs on the rest of his team.

The Infected had poured forth like a wave – the air was thick with decay, rent with gunshots and warped screams. He carved his way through the swarm with nothing but his stun baton and the corner of his launcher. It was what set him apart from the rest of his squad, of all of Blackwatch aside from the decimated ranks of the supersoldiers; the reflexes, the senses. He wasn't Mercer, wasn't blazing with inhuman power. But the added speed and fortitude was enough of an edge to have kept him alive for decades, morphed him from a regular soldier to a legend among their ranks.

Pockets of troopers were scattered among the horde. Some were holding their own. Others had not. Thankfully, none of the bodies he saw had the badges that identified the Wisemen.

Gunfire, not too far in the distance. Cross could identify the lone fighter ahead as the lieutenant by his stylized gear – Kozlowski was backpedaling, firing expertly at one of the new clawed bastards. The dual-wielded rifles were doing a fair enough job of keeping the monster at bay.

And suddenly there was a second, and the top-left half of the lieutenant was falling away in a flash of claws and blood. There was no warning, no time to react; he had been fighting and now he was dead, the transition almost lost in the chaos.

Cross sucked in a breath. Death was something he was well acquainted with, but men without a leader tended to panic. Given the current adversity they were facing, Kozlowski's fall was not going to have good repercussions on his squad, once they found out. He was going to need to round up as many of them as he could if he wanted to maintain any semblance of order.

"Cross!" That was Detwiller – he warranted a guess that the other Wiseman trailing behind was Winder. "You fucking see that?"

"Kozlowski? Yeah." The captain ground his teeth. Things were falling apart. "Poor bastard didn't even see it coming."

"And now they're all going to split. Give them a minute." He could hear the sneer in Winder's voice. "Shouldn't be bringing along children for this kind of work."

Cross's responding admonishment was cut off by a crash. All three soldiers whirled to face it; a Hunter had leapt down to the street and was eyeing them up – or whatever the equivalent was for an eyeless beast. It was a large specimen; not big enough to be one of the pack leader variants, but definitely a shade more solid-looking than the usual ones.

He didn't waste time on orders; Winder and Detwiller were the two most seasoned men on his team. Aside from himself and those two, the only other survivor of that goddamned ambush mission was in the fucking mental ward. They knew him well enough to know what he was going to do; Cross was slightly quicker on the draw, but Detwiller contributed equally to the stream of explosives that met the monster head-on. The Hunter's advance was halted before it had crossed half of the distance that separated them; the hulking beast reeled back as one of Winder's frags burst at its feet.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a glint of metal and looked up. Some dozen meters away, one of the lesser soldiers was lifting a Javelin, clearly aiming at…

"Hit the dirt!" he yelled, throwing himself to the ground.

Three thuds followed his example – two human-sized, and one caused by clods of asphalt being blasted out of the street. He flipped around as he shot back to his feet, wanting to be sure that his subordinates weren't harmed. The pair was in the process of picking themselves up. Good. Less could be said for the Hunter, which was another plus.

"Fucking amateurs!" Detwiller yelled, his hoarse voice hardly audible over the chaos. "Watch where you're aiming, fuckholes!"

Cross wasted no time on blame – the situation was quickly devolving into every man for himself, and that was a fatal setup in the middle of the Red Zone. His own men weren't breaking rank, but he needed every soldier he could get, damn hierarchy.

Blackwatch soldiers had to have nerves of steel, but there was something about losing your commanding officer and getting swarmed by deformed, taloned nightmares that could shake a man. And losing balance for a second was all that the enemy needed. The seeds of panic had already been planted – he needed to stop the confusion from spreading further.

"On me, troopers!" he called out, putting as much volume behind the words as he could muster. Authority was far more trouble than it was worth, and something he bore out necessity rather than personal ambition, but being the Captain Cross, the legendary Specialist, certainly had its merits at times like these.

Only a few of the nearby rank-and-file soldiers were able to hear him, but one of them must have radioed their comrades, because within the next minute, he'd rallied at least fifteen more men. Most were breathing heavily and looked ready to fire at anything that moved.

It was easier to keep track of them this way, but the larger group was attracting more attention from the Infected. A single target to converge upon. Cross distantly wondered how that was reasoned out – did whatever sentient hand that guided the Hive analyze the soldiers as a threat, or were they simply a mass of flesh and heat to infect and devour?

He doubted he was ever going to get an answer to that, and he didn't care to. The only important thing was to put them down.

As he ordered the soldiers around, changing positions to stymie the advancing horde, he slowly realized that they were getting driven back. Driven back and picked off. They knew how to deal with the seemingly endless ranks of Walkers, knew how to split up and confuse a Hunter, but these new things just kept appearing out of nowhere, leaping and lunging out, either rending a man on the spot or carrying him away screaming for things Cross didn't want to think of.

The damn things were too fast. Hunters were harder to take down, but at least they had tells; it took them time to leap or change direction. These things were too fast, too erratic, too hard to hit – and no less effective at slaughtering than their other evolved kin. The rest of the infected, his men knew how to handle, but these dozen or so new bastards among them were causing far too much damage. They needed to regroup.

"Fall back!" he roared to his subordinates.

These bastards kept picking off the edges of his group, whoever was unlucky enough to be on the fringe. He needed a position with as few open sides as possible – the street was too wide, he didn't have enough men for that. One of those crevices between buildings might fare better, if he could just position half of his men facing one direction and half the other. That, and a few keeping eyes on the rooftop…

…There. He wasn't sure how the city managed to have so many alleys, but he wasn't going to question it. He stayed at the rear of his group as they moved to the new position, raining explosion upon explosion at everything that tried to follow.

And then the soldiers at his back stopped moving, and he turned and saw what he hadn't been able to see at an angle. Which was, in this case, a brick wall, covered in tattered posters and stained a sickly brown in some places.

A dead end. Fuck. They could either stay cornered like trapped rats, or they could make a break for it, right back into the jaws of the Infected. There'd be no time for a counterstrike – they'd either find a safer spot, or die. And death was a bitch when it came to winning bets.

Motioning the soldiers to stay put, he ran to the alley's mouth. He lifted his arm and flicked on his communicator. "Red Crown!" he shouted into the receiver, stealing a binocular-enhanced glance back around the corner before retreating back with the rest of his men – the pack of those freakish claw-things had blocked off a group of safety-seeking stragglers from the other squadron and were tearing them into ribbons. "I'm sending you a feed! What the fuck are these things?"

The short moment it took to get a response was endless and horribly agonizing, rent with dying screams.

"Hold on, referencing…" From the shaky voice on the other end, he'd reached a newbie. Just his luck. "Uh, Stalkers. New breed of Infected. No catalogued information on their habits or weaknesses, although it does say they're highly resistant to non-explosive rounds."

Cross scanned his team and the motley remains of the other squadron; about half the men he had were carrying assault rifles. Shit. He was lucky that the Wisemen tended to carry heavier weapons, because of the rest of the lower-ranking squadron, he counted a single grenade launcher and Javelin. One of them had a satchel that might carry grenades, but other than that, he had nothing to rely on outside of his own team.

His eyes narrowed. The Wisemen were all he needed.

"Everyone, back!" He was taking a gamble, putting everyone against the wall, but they were stuck in a corner anyways, and being too close to the alley's mouth might leave his soldiers vulnerable to their own explosions. "Form a line! When those fuckers come around the corner, I want you to pour on the firepower! Stop when you've blown them all to shit, don't waste your ammo. Aim for the head!"

The screaming had stopped; any dying groans were lost in the chaotic clamor of the red zone. Any footsteps to betray his lurking foes' positions were inaudible. Despite himself, his heart was racing. Time had slowed to a crawl, forcing back the frenetic pulse in his ears to a steady drumbeat.

He lifted his arm, raising the mounted grenade launcher.

Somebody beside him was whispering a prayer.

A screech. A flash of movement.

He fired.

It was like watching a minefield chain-detonate. Explosion upon explosion bloomed in the alley's mouth, a staggering wave of light and heat and sound that trembled the ground. His ears rang and his teeth rattled in his mouth, but he forced his eyes to stay open and his finger to work the trigger, time after and time after again. The soldiers beside him held vigilant as well, a unified bid for survival placed on cleansing flame and shrapnel. Alternating explosions and inhuman shrieks beat a strangely steady rhythm into the turmoil.

If not for the fact that they didn't have enough ammo to last so long, Cross would have said that the standoff lasted for hours. Nothing happened in slow motion. Time didn't stretch out and dilate. It just went on and on and on.

And then he had stopped without knowing when or why, and fifty men gradually took heed, the barrage dying off weapon by weapon until the crack of the last shot faded away.

The silence that followed wasn't silence, but fell like a muffling shroud to deafened ears.

There wasn't much left of whatever had tried to enter the alley, but several sets of broken claws rattled amongst the smoldering flames. The pack of Stalkers was down, or at the very least severely diminished.

He stared blankly ahead, still panting. They had won. Not gloriously; most of the other platoon was dead, Lieutenant Kozlowski included. Outside of the group he'd managed to pull together, he doubted a search for survivors was going to turn up much. They still had to fight their way back through the Walkers and whatever else the Hive could throw at him. But a quick count told him his men were alive. He was alive.

It was horribly easy to forget when you were off the battlefield, when you calmly reviewed strategies and second-guessed, throwing around words like honor and valor. In the Red Zone, survival was the greatest accomplishment a soldier could hope for.


	12. A Mother's Love

**Author's Note: Wow. I… wasn't expecting so much feedback last chapter. XD It's very heartening to see I'm not alone in such thoughts. Also, broke a hundred reviews! Thanks so much, guys. :D**

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><p>Alex's good mood lasted about as long as it took for him to remember that Pariah and Greene were still loose in the city. At that point, his first encounter with actual, unbridled happiness was cut short and postponed indefinitely.<p>

The island struck him as sluggish, as if it wasn't quite aware of the rekindled threat that teemed under its fragile surface. The streets were as packed as they ever were, the city's veins flowing almost uninterrupted. People understood that New York City was doing badly; that much was hard to deny even for the suicidal idiots that went about their business beneath him. Not when they were routinely advised to stay indoors as the Infection passed over sections of the city like a slow-moving, malignant cloud. What they didn't understand was that it was no longer healing over – it was getting worse.

Snippets of their conversations drifted to him as he leapt from building to building – a new pet, somebody's wedding, a get-together after work. Confusion at the quarantine being extended. Worry over how many of those black-clad soldiers were being posted lately. A deep scowl creased Alex's face at that; as much as he wanted to tear apart the Blackwatch bastards that he could see stationed below even now, he couldn't afford to prioritize them. Keeping Blackwatch and the Infected pitted against each other kept each faction from focusing solely on him, and it was in his interest to cull the strongest side until he had the power to finish both of them off entirely. And at the moment, Redlight definitely had the advantage. As satisfying as it would have been to hear their screams as he delivered karmic retribution to the mooks in the form of a giant blade, his time was better spent cracking open hives than it was trying to get out of an alert.

And as much as he hated to admit it, Redlight had a certain priority over Blackwatch anyway. No matter how he looked at it, the virus's release was in varying ways his fault. His former self had set everything into motion with his need for revenge; his own naivety had freed Greene, at least in part. And Blackwatch consisted of psychopathic murdering bastards, but if they _won_… they'd withdraw from the city. They'd hunt him down to the last man, and that was something he wanted to avoid, but the crisis _here_, in this city whose skyline was as familiar as a trusted friend, would effectively be over. Peace for himself was unobtainable, and probably for Dana too – guilt curled around his stomach like a squirming tentacle – but everyone else… _everything _else would heal over. Life would go back to normal, whatever that was. His memories painted it as something to be cherished. That had to count for something.

Redlight, on the other hand – if it won, he wasn't going to have a world to come back to anymore.

It didn't even matter that Pariah seemed to want to make amends – no, that was the wrong word. Making amends didn't imply enough twisted arguments and forced assimilation to paint an accurate picture. Alex Mercer still wasn't sure who he really _was_, but he was darkly certain that if he ever joined Redlight's hive, he wouldn't be that person anymore. As annoying and cumbersome as a _conscience _was, it seemed to be the only thing that separated him from Pariah, from Greene. From what they did. And he'd had enough of losing his identity.

He paused on yet another flat, featureless rooftop to look down on those seemingly endless crowds. No matter how many of them died, humanity replaced its ranks just as efficiently as the Infected did. Flocking straight back into the danger zone in search of opportunity with suicidal impatience, cloaked in a sense of invincibility as they lined up at the chopping block in droves. Why couldn't they ever _learn_?

He wondered how many of them were dead already, already breeding grounds for the second-deadliest virus ever known to man. Puppets, living on borrowed time while the disease pulled their strings. _That_ was what bothered him about Redlight, moreso than how it twisted its victims into monsters, than how it spawned giant abominations of raw flesh. Physically, he was more monstrous than any of them. He simply had the ability to hide behind a human façade, an ability they lacked; underneath his skin, he was pretty sure he was the personification of horror. And meat was meat – it didn't matter how repulsive a Hunter or Hydra looked to passerby. It was all food to him.

No, what rankled him about Redlight – and the virus as a whole – was how it completely subjugated its victims' wills. Whatever a person wanted, whatever they fought for… Redlight erased all of that and left the bodies as marionettes to the Hive's queen bee. Pariah might have tried to hide it behind words like _unity_ or _perfection_, and from what he'd understood of Greene's thoughts, she was convinced that she was creating one giant, tumor-covered happy family, but it didn't change the truth. It didn't even really matter that he hardly cared about the people who it infected. The virus made them into _slaves_, and that was far more reprehensible than making them into monsters alone. Luckily, he'd been free of that, at least before Pariah had come and shown him a taste of what it meant to cater to the Hive… and in retrospect, he realized that his personal freedom, the ability to choose his actions – whether or not to be a monster – was something that he cherished. Not because his memories told him that it was good, a cause to be championed, but because _he_ knew.

And he'd tear Redlight down for _daring_ to take it away from him.

Morbidly curious about the state of things, he recalibrated his eyes and peered down at the street. Ever since Pariah had been freed, he'd been wary about touching the Hive, but nothing unusual happened as he slipped into the different spectrum, shades of red on red. The sounds of the city abruptly faded as if a curtain had fallen between him and the rest of Manhattan, replaced by the moans and whispers of the Infected. He scowled and shook his head, forcing them into the back of his mind.

Sure enough, the healthy appearance of the bustling street was only skin-deep. A few white-orange silhouettes glowed among the masses, sticking out to him like open sores. Not a pandemic yet, at least on this street, but it was present. This was how it started, always. As long as the roots were there…

There was no point in letting them spread it, letting the contagion run its course. Like so many others across the city, they'd wither away into madness, then rebound as monsters ready to spread their corruption further. They were already dead – there was no reason for any confounding moral restrictions to apply to them. Either way, they wouldn't survive much longer, but he could at least make them useful to him at the end.

He straightened up from his crouch. It was time to hunt.

People tended not to recognize his normal appearance as long as he didn't do anything particularly obvious, but he changed forms anyway as he carefully lowered himself to ground level on the back side of the building. Pulling out at random one of the hundreds of different human genetic makeups he had at his disposal was second nature, complete with a mimicry of whatever material their previous owners had been clothed in when he ended them. He squeezed his temples with one hand, blotting out the old memories that came with his chosen body and focusing on the simple feel of his nails pressed against his skin. It didn't matter what name this person had or how it had felt on his wedding day. He was nothing more than a costume now.

And he didn't regret it, because as the memories relented, he noticed that this body – like so many others he possessed – was clad in Blackwatch raiment. Good riddance. But while that disguise did have its uses, this wasn't one of them, and he let the black Kevlar ripple into a plain sweater and slacks before slipping out of the secluded enclosure behind the rows of stores and into broad daylight.

As much as he hated crowds, hated the claustrophobia and hunger and that constant, unshakable feeling of being watched, being unable to keep perfect tabs on his surroundings, they had their uses. Nobody noticed the monster in their midst; he was the perfect, genetically-engineered wolf in sheep's clothing. And for as laughably different as he was from humanity, their congregations were ideal for him to disappear into. He could become anyone, and in a sea of forgettable faces, no human eye could tail him for long.

He pushed past the crowds, and his body growled hungrily at the contact. Those people hardly registered in his altered sight; he ignored them, following the burning glow of telltale infection. The closest was up the street by a dozen paces or so, slightly to his right. He could cross that distance effortlessly in a quick, efficient leap, but it defied him with thickly packed bodies and hundreds of eyes to scrutinize him. Why didn't he dive into the chase anyhow? It mattered not whether they were ignorant of his presence or full-out panicked and screaming – it wasn't like his quarry would have a prayer of escaping either way. There was nothing to threaten him, nothing to provide more than momentary inconvenience. Why did he bother playing by some unspoken societal, _human_ rulebook when he so clearly had the power to forge his own path?

It had been so much less complicated before 'right' and 'wrong' had any meaning to him. When he could do whatever he pleased, whatever he _needed_ to do, without flinching inside; when he could take anyone as prey and no amount of collateral damage was too monstrous for his own goals. And now he could look back at those times and reason to himself why it had been more effective, that he had been fighting for his own survival, and feel varying shades of disgust at his actions nonetheless. It hadn't changed overnight; it was something that had been laid down so slowly, so insidiously, that he hadn't recognized that anything _had_ changed until it was too late. He was strangled in a series of restrictions and lines he'd gradually crisscrossed over himself so thoroughly that he now couldn't even dream of releasing them. He muttered a curse under his breath, either to humanity or to himself.

He was drawing close to his first target; the man was moving slowly, but wasn't so disoriented that he drew notice from the people nearest to him. The ones that were openly hallucinating were so much harder to devour unnoticed. The man was gradually stumbling towards the edge of the sidewalk; once the person directly behind him was sufficiently distracted by his cell phone, Alex chose his moment to strike.

A touch from behind, and the dying man didn't have time to turn around, much less scream. Alex stepped _into_ the person, a flurry of tentacles melting the man down to memories and biomass and redesigning his appearance even as he filed away the new DNA. It was a process he had worked down to an art – unless somebody was watching his victim, nobody would catch the changeling slipping into their skin. Shapeshifting in the middle of a crowded area always seemed to get noticed by somebody, but sneaking up behind somebody already there and taking their place was surprisingly effective.

The man's memories were fuzzy, frayed around the edges – the Infection had already begun to eat away at them, but he hadn't quite lost his identity yet. Gavin Hughes, a businessman who'd always dreamt of being an artist, mid-forties, and – why did it even matter? Just another shade to add to his personal choir of the damned. He'd been doing the man a favor – making it quick, sparing him the insidious decay of being torn apart over a span of days rather than a span of moments.

The monster wearing Gavin Hughes' face glowered and cast his eyes upon his next snack.

It settled into a rhythm he'd followed many times before; pick the target, pursue, wait for the best timing, and finally take his prize. It was easier to ignore the new memories as he went on, worked the whole thing into a repetitive pattern. With a twinge of annoyance, he realized that his lunch was nearly over – there were only three bright blotches on the street, and he was in the process of splitting apart the one directly before him-

"Zeus has been sighted! Open fire, open fire!"

_Shit._ Even muted through his partial connection to the hivemind, that was a sound he'd know anywhere. It was the sound of fucking up and having everything you were in the middle of doing interrupted by a bunch of assholes with ordnance. He jerked back, tentacles still outstretched, and dove into motion before the roughly person-shaped hunk of biomass was done being assimilated into his body. Those few seconds were always an annoyance whenever he had to move, the new flesh numb and certainly not aerodynamic.

He dismissed his infected vision as he pulled out of his dive – the world fell back into daylight colors and sound returned at once, not unlike when Dana would suddenly jack up the volume of whatever music she was listening to. Predictably, soldiers were shouting orders and everyone else was panicking. For a codename, every single fucking civvie seemed to know exactly what the word 'Zeus' meant. Either that, or they were afraid of the sudden gunfire. Or his tentacles. Whatever. When he was well-fed, like now, a few bullets only hurt slightly more than when Dana decided to start poking him.

And… hell. Marines were pouring out of a distinctive truck in the street, sending the rest of the traffic into disarray. He hadn't yet become such a bleeding heart that he wouldn't kill anyone who was trying to do the same to him, but the regular army grunts just weren't the same as Blackwatch; the rush had long since given way to a peculiar sort of guilt. Few and far between did their memories give him much reason to think he was justified in killing them beyond protecting himself, as opposed to Blackwatch's few and far between standard for _not_ giving him reason.

But one of them was barking something into a radio, and some faceless soldier wasn't worth beating off a strike team for. He leapt into the group of Marines, snatched up the offender, and sprang away; the man's orders quickly turned to screams. Alex crushed the man's communicator with the hand that wasn't gripping the man around the chest like a ragdoll.

Something inside of him shivered. That was it, wasn't it? He'd broken the radio; he had nothing more to fear from this grunt than he did the bullets that even now prickled his biomass jacket. Probably less, if the man had broken something with his landing. Couldn't he just let him go?

But the tendrils were already reaching out, and he didn't try to stop them, instead focusing his restraint on holding back the memories of a man that was just doing his job for his country. It wasn't the first time he'd taken this kind of life. Wouldn't be the last, either.

And it definitely wasn't the first time he'd done so in vain to _himself,_ because the air currents above were throbbing with pressure and _how the fucking fuck did they get a gunship here already-_

There were two more behind it, one of them already spitting rockets into the jam-packed street. That was what he hated when Blackwatch raised the alert, aside from having to drop whatever he was doing – he could weather their strike teams and soldiers, but they never seemed to stop coming. He knew from experience that once they spotted him, they didn't abandon their attempts. It seemed like as long as somebody had a camera on him, he would be treated to an endless buffet of meat shields and their firearms. Whoever had designed that particular policy wasn't winning any awards for innovation... But if he waited too much time, it allowed them to mobilize heavier fare against him. That hadn't bothered him until they started pulling in the thermobarics. He hadn't seen one in a few weeks, but after that one time... he wasn't going to hang around and chance it. He couldn't let them box him in.

Swerving around a group of panicking teenagers, he ripped a postal box out of the sidewalk and hurled it at the nearest helicopter. He winced a second later when it careened down into the still-occupied street, colliding with a gout of flame and a chorus of agonized shrieks. Oops.

People. Collateral damage. Right. Hundreds of idiots without the common decency to get out of his way… but it wasn't like they deserved to die for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And that was almost invariably what happened to everyone in a hundred-foot radius of himself when he was provoked.

Not walking sacks of meat, not invisible. Just a bunch of stupid civvies. How far could conditioning take him? Would it ever come naturally, or would he always have to remind himself that they were people with lives? They were innocent of this whole mess, and as much as he longed to lash out against his enemies and feel blood splatter against his skin… he knew better now than to pick his fights here. Or he didn't, but he liked to pretend he did, liked to hold onto some proof that made him feel less monstrous. He wasn't Blackwatch. He wasn't going to kill the innocent and enjoy it, wasn't going to gun them down and laugh. Wasn't going to plunge his tentacles into their skin and sigh in relief and ravenous desire as he absorbed their biomass, pure flesh and raw material that failed to differentiate among the good or the bad…

…Yeah, it was definitely time to go.

0o0o0

Dana sighed and leaned back, closing the window of yet another false lead.

_Damn,_ but Blackwatch had everything nailed up tight. She was no amateur at the subtle art of digging through people's secrets – she broke encryptions like her brother broke armored vehicles. She'd picked up the skill because she needed an edge in journalism's competitive market; insider information, faster access. But it hadn't been long before she realized just how much of a rush it was to screw around with everything she could get her hands on. Illegal, maybe, but not _that_ illegal. Like breaking into somebody's house, maybe, but instead of stealing their jewelry, she was rearranging the furniture, hiding their keys, and pouring maple syrup over the carpet. Maybe that was why it was so appealing. Either way, picking apart securities was a _hobby_. Hell, she'd even hacked into Google's homepage once and replaced their trademark logo with a more innovative one featuring a middle finger for the 'gle'. It had been fixed before ten minutes went by, but damn had the fallout been hilarious. And more importantly, she'd never gotten caught.

She drummed her fingers against the mouse. All of that experience was getting her nowhere, and her pride was beginning to feel a bit battered as a result of it. Elizabeth Greene had been a _challenge._ A new level of security to breach, and she'd risen up to meet it – and then strolled away from their sites with vital files on her, along with several folders full of Blackwatch's operation plans. This? If she didn't trust Alex implicitly, she'd have sworn he was making Pariah up. How could Blackwatch hold onto such an important test subject for forty years and not have _anything_ buried?

It might have been a humbling experience for anybody else, but Dana Mercer refused to admit defeat. If she couldn't find anything, it was because Blackwatch were a bunch of pricks, not because she wasn't good enough. And there _had_ to be something hidden in their records, so she'd keep at it until she collapsed. Or until Alex pried her away from the computer. Which would probably only happen if she collapsed, because if he ever voiced concerns about how much time she spent researching, all she had to do was snap at him and he'd back off.

She took a swig of her coffee and grimaced – it had gotten cold. Or lukewarm, anyway, which was worse than cold. At least outright cold had an impact. She set the quarter-full mug down unhappily. Iced coffee was actually pretty good stuff; maybe she'd have to start getting that instead. Not as much of a pick-me-up as hot coffee, but least it stayed drinkable for over an hour. Not that she could get any, and the stuff she tried to make on her own sucked. She missed Starbucks. But Alex was in full Overprotective Asshole mode; he probably wouldn't even let her step outside without an escort.

…No, it wasn't just Starbucks. She missed the_ city_; the Manhattan she'd moved to nearly a year ago, the one that was full of life and mystique and stories that _didn't _try to kill you once you breached their web of secrets. She missed walking around and enjoying the nightlife, letting herself be dazzled by the lights. That was Manhattan – not this place patrolled by soldiers and smothered by fear, crawling with a disease straight out of a horror movie. She was a prisoner, under unspoken house arrest, and she couldn't even blame her jailor. Objectively, she knew he was trying to protect her, and she was completely aware of the danger outside. It wasn't just the monsters; a single scrape or a person coughing on the other side of the street could seal her fate as effectively as a Hunter or Hydra. That didn't stop her from feeling like a teenager with a controlling mom.

And_ that _only reminded her more of the only parental figure she'd known as a child – the brother who apparently was a separate being from who she currently called her brother, also the core reason why the city had been a hellhole for over three months and the new version of himself even existed. Her _brother_ had caused all of this, and she'd tried to _help_ him. She'd made the decision to move to the city because she hadn't given up hope that she could make everything the way it had been when they were children. How could she not have known? How had she deluded herself for so long? She'd known that there was something wrong with Alex, the human Alex, something that went beyond the scars of their shared upbringing, but she'd written it off with excuses and cloying hopes that maybe things would heal with time. But _Alex_ – the brother who'd held her at night when she crawled into his bed to run away from a nightmare, the protector who shielded her from her mother's drunken rages – and the person that had died a little more with each passing year – had… had…

Had caused the apocalypse. Hadn't cared enough to defend her from himself, in the end. And she was torn between love and hate, because he was a monster and a sociopath and still her brother, and now he was dead and there was nothing either could say to each other. She loved him, but it had been a one-sided love for years now, and she hated him because there was no other response she could afford the purveyor of the unique kind of hell New York City had become. A shudder traveled up her back, resting to prickle the hairs on her neck. It hurt to think about, how wrong she'd been, how sickeningly cruel and depraved he'd turned out to be -

And her mind was wandering. She shook herself and muttered a curse under her breath. _Get a grip_, she admonished herself. _Eyes on the prize._

Blackwatch's main database – Blacknet, they'd dubbed it, with all the creativity of a cheese grater – had been difficult to decrypt at first, but she was well aware of all of its tricks by now. Unfortunately, where 'Elizabeth Greene' had led to 'Mother', which had plenty of traces, Pariah was… vexing. It consistently gave her returns, but they were always unrelated and useless to her – old battle plans, funding records, the occasional Redlight project derived from Greene. It was like somebody had tagged thousands of old data at random in an attempt to dissuade any hackers that did manage to make it as far as she currently was. And that implied that there _was_ something of use buried amongst all the junk, but she'd sifted through hundreds of them, even tried to filter them further, and nothing even hinted of a secret project or an apparent progenitor of Redlight.

One thing she found, though, was that each tagged page had a different string of numbers in the url, something that she didn't see in newer articles or even data that these dummy pages were connected to. Never one to miss a pattern, she'd tried adding the sequences together, to no avail – there was no constant. Multiplication was pointless because some strings had zeroes and others didn't. At that point, she copied down about twenty of the strings and fed them into one of her programs.

And judging by the flag that just popped up, that test was done. She squinted and pulled it up.

There were no total matches, but there was a pattern. If the second number of each sequence was subtracted from the first, then that difference was multiplied by the third number, the fourth was subtracted from the quotient, and so on, all twenty of her sampled strings ended up equaling one of four answers; 5184, 288, 2688, or 3456. It could have been a coincidence, but given the seemingly random links and strings, she wasn't ready to brush off what was currently her only lead.

She plugged those into her search. 5184 and 288 were duds, the former leading to nothing and the latter only referencing some battle in which two hundred and eighty-eight casualties were sustained, but 2688 was the jackpot. If she'd been going after anything that had looked remotely promising, a mention of 'notes on project 2688 – ABANDONED' was a neon advertisement.

The date on the cache was very old; it hadn't been touched since the mid-nineties. Some might have dismissed it on that alone, but Dana was well aware that Gentek's projects with Redlight had gone back far before her time. Any information was valuable information, and some partially-deleted files from fifteen years ago had every reason to be valuable to her. Especially when she'd already beaten all of the recent stuff half to death and uncovered nothing.

Of course, it was password-protected. Very.

Keyloggers could have worked, and she had a number of different types at her disposal, but she couldn't wait for somebody on the other end to access the pages she wanted. It was a valid strategy with high-traffic sites, but with a cache this obscure, she had no guarantees that anyone _would_ type in the passwords in the near future. Or the far future. She had to use some more specialized worms to break the encryptions, and that took time. She frowned, fingers hovering impatiently above the mouse as she waited for the program's returns.

Three minutes passed, and she began to wonder if the data was too old for her programs to break. She was about to cancel them and try a different tool when the phone rang, shattering her concentration as she racked her brains for what to use next.

She glanced over at the offending object, then back to her monitor. It could wait; she was in the middle of something important. She just needed… fuck, she couldn't think when that annoying tone was playing. Her fingers drummed out an irritated rhythm as she waited for the ringing to finish, then focused on the screen.

That lasted for the eight seconds of silence before it rang _again. _Dana cast a vexed glare over at the phone; was the person stubborn or just plain stupid? She hadn't picked up, so she was obviously not available – or whatever, maybe she was, but that was all details. She was in the middle of something, dammit. What, did they expect her to suddenly change her mind?

She grit her teeth and ignored it as the second call petered out, only for a third to warble out. She was disgruntledly unsurprised to hear the fourth, if not ready to start biting through the cord. She could probably blame any sort of damage on Alex, anyway.

"I'm not home, assholes," she muttered to herself. What was this dumbass's problem? _God, _but that tone was distracting. Normally, she could read her various programs off the back of her hand, but this clingy moron had her concentration so shot that she had to open up a folder and read through them. And even then, she couldn't comprehend much of what she was looking at.

God _damn _it, was this person brain-dead or something? She clenched her teeth as the phone rang out again for the fifth time. Was she going to have to unplug the damn thing?

She was contemplating doing just that when the answering machine began to record a message. One that didn't sound all too pleased. She stiffened.

"Dana Mercer, I'm watching a live feed of you right now, so _yes_, I know you're fucking there. Stop playing World of Warcraft, get off your ass, and answer the damn phone. I haven't got all day."

She blinked once, then huffed as she got up, pushing the chair away. It only took her a second to recognize that voice, and it left her scowling. What the hell did Captain Cross want with her now? What had Alex done this time?

The phone rang again. This time, she answered it, more than a little chagrined.

"Hello?"

A sigh crackled through the other end. "About damn time."

"Fuck you too. And I don't play WoW, you asshole."

"I don't care if you were – you know what? I'm not going to bother with it. Okay. Now that you've stopped ignoring me, I'll get straight to the point. I need to talk to your brother."

"He's not here."

"I can _see_ that, thank you very much."

Dana laughed. "And I'm supposed to know where he is? I'm not his babysitter."

She frowned. In a sense, really, she _was_. He was always looking to her for guidance the same way that she had with the original Alex when she was a child, and she couldn't think of a request that had nothing to do with food, hygiene, and going out to meet people that he hadn't dutifully obeyed. She loved him, but he seemed to adore her on a level she couldn't quite understand until she likened it to her younger days. He lit up at every little bit of approval she showed, acted cowed whenever she snapped at him. She wasn't complaining, but she had to wonder _how_ that had all happened – why she was so important to the virus that had become her brother.

"I don't think anyone could be paid enough for such a job." Cross's dry words brought her out of her brief musings. "Look, I just need a time he'll be back at. I need to know when to be back at the cams and when to try again. I'm a busy man."

"Probably not soon," Dana muttered. Lack of sleep combined with the implications of being spied upon by a cocky Blackwatch asshole that may or may not have had superpowers was not doing wonders for her already short temper. "Look, I'll make him call you back as soon as he shows up. Just leave me a number and I'll get him to talk to you. He might not want to, but he listens to me."

"I never use the same phone, so don't bother." Cross sighed. "W-"

"Paranoid much?" she cut in.

There was a pause. "Miss Mercer, do you have any idea how much I'm risking by maintaining contact with you and your brother?"

"You're not doing it because you like us, so I don't really care," she sniped back.

At that, the bastard actually chuckled. "Fair point. When do you think he'll be back? I'll try calling again at that time."

"Can't you just check the fucking cameras you have planted here?"

"I don't always have access to the feed. Time?"

Dana hmphed. "Try again at nine. Now quit bothering me, I've got work to do."

He laughed again. "Gladly."

A moment later, a click went through the line as the phone on his end was hung up.

Rolling her eyes, she clapped the phone back onto its hook. Damn interruptions. Well, that was over with now. She glanced back over to her computer, ready to pick up where she left off, and blinked. The worms finally had done their work, and the security was cracked, leaving the cache open to her perusal.

Her eyes lit up as she clicked on the page…

…and let out a strangled scream of frustration. Everything was gone. All of the pages her new search turned up were corrupted, and there was nothing she could do to fix broken data. The only link that wasn't tainted was a deleted recording, and…

…she might actually be able to restore that one. As long as something wasn't outright erased or broken, she could bring it back. It just took a bit of creative prying.

Dana slid into her chair. She had a feeling that this one wasn't another dead end.

0o0o0

In the perpetual darkness of the underground, a woman smiled.

For what reason was there _not_ to be happy? After ages of being locked up and alone, unable but _needing_ to share her gift, she was free. After defeat and darkness and one ageless, encompassing moment of fear, she was alive. She was surrounded by her children – so strong, so beautiful, so obedient. The cold stone and metal that had formed the walls of this place – cold cold _so cold_ like the cage she'd been entombed in for forty years – was now warm and alive with her embrace. That need to spread and endow new offspring was a blissful thrum in her veins, sated and _alive _after being locked up inside for more time than she could imagine.

There were other things, though, things she wasn't sure whether or not to be happy over. Things she couldn't settle her skittering thoughts upon long enough to do any more than feel – feel, but not understand. She felt unchanged but changed. Something different. She still had her love, but it was subtly off somehow. Hungry. And _she_ was hungry.

But it mattered not, because she existed again; she knew where her voice stemmed from and could will her gift to adorn those things she blessed with her touch. She stood in a Warm Place, home-center-protected-safe-_hers_, where she created life and fed her children.

There was much to be done – reviving the withered seeds, driving back the threats that converged around her family. Things had not gone as they should have. Her children had been lost and crying out, broken without a mother's love to guide them. Her firstborn, the Heart, the Pinnacle, had been locked away in the lonely darkness, so far that even she hadn't been able to feel him.

She, too, had been in a dark place; one with neither comfort nor pain, calm nor fury. It was not the same sort of cage she'd waited in for years upon years – this one had no doors, and she vaguely sensed that she was not alone within its confines. There had been no sense of time, and she'd known that she was gone – but her purpose was fulfilled. The mantle of her love would be passed onto this prison, and in time, it would carry out her calling just as she had.

So she had slept, and never expected to awaken.

But now there was light and dark and feeling and time again, and her greatest son was close enough to touch. Above the darkness and echoing tunnels, she felt her many offspring in dutiful harmony, carrying the seeds of her love so that everything might be united within her arms.

She let her contented pride radiate out to her young, and their joy and resolve pulsed back to her, staggered waves of euphoria. Beside her, her firstborn picked apart those scattered sensations and sent them back as a coherent thought.

_The dawn finally begins._

Yes, she decided, she liked that. Her son was so much better with words than her, so strong and smart and pure; he made her ever so proud. He had brought her out of the dark and given her children hope. And he seemed to have a gift – _her_ gift – of his own.

But not everything was right yet, and she fretted like every mother should. There was her _other_ son, created from her yet not born of her. And she mourned him, heart breaking over what had been done. The lesser creatures, those apart from her gift, the prey – just as they'd feared her and trapped her, they'd done something to him, twisted his gift and mind into something horrible. He was blind and confused and hurting, and so trapped in his rage that no help could reach him. She'd wept for him, and her Family had wept too, even as they struck back at their maddened brother in order to survive. He hovered at the edge of her perception, always struggling and seething and loathing, tied to her mind but closed off to her adoration. And she loved him none the less, this dark and wayward child that she would do anything in her power to heal.

Each moment he spent alone and lost was a betrayal on her behalf, and she worried over what she could do. He had his own surrogate child, one he seemed as attached to as she was to all of hers… but the girl-prey-thing _wasn't_ his, bore none of their perfection. She had felt it as she called her children to bring the girl to her, had tried and somehow _failed_ to bring her under her wing – had felt her seeds struggle and fail. Yet she was not under his, either. Was he simply too confused to understand how, or did he have no love of his own? She could bring them together. Find his nest and bestow her gift unto this girl. The thought of touching one of _them_ felt strange now; another pang of that new hunger coursed through her as she considered it. It was… she didn't understand _what_ she wanted, but it mattered not. She could not harm the girl if she wanted to bring her son back home. She would unite them and he would understand, and they would all be together.

Her firstborn smiled sadly and shook his head. _I am afraid that he is too far gone. Addled. He would not take kindly to it. With him, we must be patient._

_His nest_, she sent back adamantly. Her love could save him. She knew it, felt it as deeply as she felt the presence of every child in her Hive. It needed no explanation and heeded no denial.

Her child flashed her a brilliant grin in response. "Not yet, Mother. But soon."

Her son's thoughts were distinctive among the chorus of her family, his intentions always gilded by superfluous words that she often had to struggle and focus to understand. And currently, he was interested in something else – not the son that was hurt and broken and _mine mine mine _but not hers and she needed to fix that, but one of those men that had _trapped_ her for so long, and she snarled at the thought. One of the prey that wore black shells in a misled attempt to ward off her gift, but the image held in her son's mind showed a man unprotected. This one was faintly familiar to her; the one that should-have-been-but-wasn't, something her gift had touched but not converted.

"This one, on the other hand… _this_ is the one we take next."

She didn't like it. There was a child that _needed_ her, a presence she could already feel and sense. Nothing was more important than that, especially not one of those hated men that burned and broke her children. But her son was pure. Her son was _right_. He had the answers to everything that she had tried and failed to do alone.

After forty years of waiting, her Family would encompass the world.

0o0o0

"I said no windows!"

Dana glared at her brother, who sent her a pleading look in return through the glass. Were she not busy being exasperated at his total lack of social normalcies, she would have admitted he looked quite silly, sprawled out sideways across the wall like some sort of Spiderman emulator. As it was, she _was_ busy being exasperated with his total lack of social normalcies, so she treated him to her best scowl and refused to answer his unspoken request of '_please let me the fuck inside already_'.

"Street level. Go down there. There is a door. It is not locked. Take it. Go through the lobby. Use the stairs. Sixth floor. Fourth room. Door. Use. Problem solved."

Her moronic eldritch abomination of a sibling just blinked.

"Alex, I said no."

He kept staring, pretending he hadn't heard her. She raised one eyebrow and stared back. Two could play that game.

Twenty-five seconds later, she relented. It was impossible to beat Alex in a staring contest. Especially when she was struggling not to laugh at how stupid he looked. She heaved a sigh and pulled the window open. "Fine, fine. But use the fucking door next time, all right?"

"Sure, sure," he muttered absently, climbing in over the sill. "Thanks, Dana."

She rolled her eyes. "You're welcome. Is it so damn hard to remember?"

"Well, it's not like I was coming in from the ground, and the window was closer…"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. I get it. You're crazy. Still doesn't mean you can't use the door like everyone else."

He just frowned. He didn't think it was something he could explain without dropping the fact that he also desired to eat nearly everyone he came into contact with, and honesty be damned, that wasn't a conversation he was ready to have.

He exhaled harshly through his nose. If that particular topic never came up in conversation, it would still be too soon for him. "Anything happen today?" he asked instead, letting his hands fall to his sides.

"Well, Greene and her son stopped by earlier with a few of their zombie minions. We had a lovely chat over tea and crumpets."

"What?" He bristled, arms rippling slightly in the lamplight. "I don't – why? _How_? If they of them so much as touched you-"

She sighed again. "That was sarcasm, Alex."

"Oh." His blank gaze closely resembled that of a first grader suddenly finding themselves in a nightclub.

"Is it even possible to have a sense of humor around you?"

"I just don't get it," he muttered mutinously. "What's the point of saying stuff you don't mean?"

"Alex, I am a fucking English major and – you know what? Forget it. It'd all go over your thick head. I'm never going to teach the literary arts to somebody who still can't figure out how to use a door."

Alex felt vaguely insulted. "I just came to check on you, but if all you're going to do is insult me, I've got Infected to kill."

"Hey, hey, wait." She lifted a hand. "No going anywhere. Cross called earlier, wanted to reach you about something. And… judging by the clock, he should be calling again in a half hour or so, so stick around for it. I was beginning to wonder if you'd show up on time."

"I was busy. Lots of work today." As if to punctuate the statement, he flopped onto the sofa, fingers stretching, grasping at nothing. Nothing more than a ruse, she knew; some residual habit, or an act he maintained for her. Her brother didn't get tired. Fatigue was an unknown to him, the being that could leap up ten stories while carrying a bus, run the vertical length of the island in three minutes, and bend a telephone pole like a pipe cleaner. While still carrying the bus, probably. Right now, though, he looked oddly mortal, one finger drawing circles in the air.

Then he frowned and sat up. "Wait, Cross? Why didn't you tell me that earlier? That's actually important. Sort of."

Dana shrugged. "Hey, screwing with you is more fun."

Still scowling, he got up and stalked over to the kitchen, pausing under the archway as if unsure of what he was doing there. A few paces back and forth and he was at the couch again, falling onto it with much more violence than was necessary.

His sister wasn't sure whether to be worried or amused. "What's gotten into you now?"

He didn't look at her, keeping his eyes on the ceiling. "I shouldn't be here," he grumbled. His gaze flitted over to the window, and he made a sharp gesture towards the nightlights of the city beyond. "So much trouble brewing. Festering. Nobody else can stop it. Just wasting time here – it's wrong. I should be doing something about it."

"I appreciate your concern for the human race, but the world isn't going to end in a fucking hour, so try not to explode for an hour and you can get back to doing your thing. Actually, I've got something to show you while we wait. I finally got a –"

The phone rang.

"Oh, screw it." Dana glanced at Alex, who was staring blankly at the source of the ringing. "What? Answer the damn thing, it's for you."

On the third ring, he was still eyeing up the telephone as if he wasn't sure what to do with it, so Dana heaved the most exaggerated sigh she could and yanked it from its perch.

"Hello?"

"Good night, Miss Mercer. Can you please put the idiot who doesn't know how to follow simple instructions on the line?"

She laughed at that despite herself, and turned around to do just that. Apparently, Alex had heard the voice over the line, because he was already reaching out for the phone, his expression stony.

"Cross."

"Oh, good, you actually do know how to use a phone. That completely dumbassed look you had a minute ago was leading me to think otherwise. It was also hilarious."

"I know how to use a goddamn phone," he snapped. "I just don't want to pick up and find that it's one of Dana's friends or something. You're early."

"Your sister said around nine. This is around." Cross's voice was flat. "That, and I can see you're here. I want this information out of you as soon as possible; I've got work to do."

"Information?" Mercer's eyes narrowed. "What information?"

"I know you, Mercer, and that includes the fact that you spend at least eighteen hours a day killing things, breaking things, looking for things to kill, looking for things to break, or brooding. In other words, you've got a lot of field time. Which brings me to my question. Have you seen a new type of Infected around?"

"If you're talking about those sticklike bastards with the claws, then yeah, I have."

"Good. So you've seen the Stalkers already."

"Stalkers?" Alex mulled it over. "I guess that works. The ones I dismembered were pretty quiet until they pounced me."

"That, and they're nyctophilic. Moreso than the rest of the Infected, anyway."

Alex almost argued that, given that he saw all sorts of Greene's monsters out during the day, and he himself wasn't averse to light, but… now that he thought of it, it was true. He really wasn't that fond of broad daylight at all; it was too easy to be seen, and some deep-seated part of him was constantly letting him know that. The shadows were where he did all of his best work, both literally _and_ metaphorically. Metaphorically? Shit, maybe Dana's weird English stuff was rubbing off on him.

There was no point in voicing that, so instead, he asked, "All right, so I've seen Stalkers. What about them?"

"Everything. I lost a lot of men to these fuckers – not _my_ men, but men I was supposed to be keeping alive all the same. I have no interest in letting that happen again. You're a lot less destructible than we are; I was going to ask you to gather intel, but if you've already fought them, you should have some. I need to know how best to fight these things. A dozen of them tore apart our platoons as thoroughly as that many Hydras and twice as fast, and that's saying something."

"And?" Mercer flicked his hands upwards, the exasperated gesture going unseen. "How am I supposed to know how you people fight? I don't think any advice I can give you from experience is going to be that helpful, Captain. Unless you've suddenly figured out how to be less squishy."

"Squishy?" Cross repeated incredulously. His only answer was irritated silence, so he let out a gravelly sigh. "Okay, you have a point, jackass – we don't have claws and shit to swing around like built-in Swiss army knives. But you're too much of an idiot to think outside of your own tactics for five seconds? I thought you ate people's memories. Surely you know how we work?"

Idiot? Alex silently snarled. He wasn't stupid. He was definitely not stupid. Dana sometimes called him that, but she also called him a lot of other things that he was pretty sure that he _wasn't_, so he could chalk that up to her rather uncensored means of speech. He certainly didn't match up to his human alter ego's level of intelligence, but that was fine because he didn't want any traces of the real Alexander J Mercer's personality floating around in his head anyway. Okay, so all of his attempts at planning tended to blow up in his face. Sometimes literally. That didn't mean he was _stupid_… He just… preferred to let his claws and tentacles handle most of his work. If humans weren't so physically pathetic, they wouldn't have to deal with so much of that annoying pondering and introspection either.

He began to pace around the kitchen. "I do. I just don't give a fuck. You're a tactician – get off your ass and get to work."

"I don't _have_ anything to work with, you lazy sonofabitch. We've just ran into these things once, and everyone was too busy trying not to fucking _die_ to pick up anything that wasn't obvious. Do you have any info at all? Anything you noticed about them? Weak spots, things to watch out for? Something that surprised you? Throw me a damn bone here; I didn't just call to listen to the sound of your voice."

"They're chewy," he said sarcastically, still miffed at the idiot comment. "Could go with a milkshake."

"Mercer, fuck you."

Alex paused – not because he was considering the suggestion, which by this point, he was relatively sure Cross hadn't actually meant, but because it occurred to him that while 'chewy' was not an adjective that applied to his method of eating, he _had_ noticed an anomaly as far as these new monsters – _Stalkers_, apparently – were concerned. He hesitated for a second, then silently shook his head. He doubted that how easily he could digest something would be the sort of information Cross wanted, and if Dana was any example to go by, humans didn't really like hearing about his idea of a square meal anyway. That was his own little mystery to ponder.

"Look, I don't have anything to tell you. They're sneaky. They still die like everything else does." An annoyed sandpaper sigh rasped over their connection. "If you're so fucking afraid of them, just tell me where your next assignment is and I'll shadow you."

Cross was surprised at the offer, to say the least. It wouldn't be the first time Mercer had lent a hand, but he'd been under the impression that the entire Wiseman team dying, save himself, would have been a bonus in Mercer's eyes. Apparently, Mercer was either smarter or less vindictive than he'd given him credit for. Both seemed equally unlikely. But despite the obvious safety net that Zeus provided against his enemies, plus the time he'd get to observe Stalkers getting their asses handed to them, he was hesitant. His record was sketchy enough, and he was well aware that the time he was spending off the radar was killing every residual chance he still had at taking the reins of Blackwatch. Bringing Mercer along again so soon seemed like a dangerous idea, but going through another clusterfuck like today was even less tasteful. "I'd rather not. I'm skating on thin enough ice as it is with Red Crown. But… hell," he grated. "I may just take you up on that one."

"I'm shocked." Alex's voice was dry. "It's not like I'm actually _useful_ or something. But hey. Cross, if you want information out of me, give me some of yours. What's the situation in Brooklyn? It's under quarantine, but the bridges there are still littered with detectors from when it wasn't, and I haven't had a chance to fly a chopper over there yet."

"That, and you don't want to get too far away from your sister, am I right?" The silence on the other end of the line was enough of an answer. "Fair enough. It's like Manhattan was, a day or two after Greene got free the first time. There are definitely Infected showing up, but nothing advanced yet. You might be interested to know that there's no epicenter, there's a _line_. All of the infection there is branching outward from a path that leads directly from our headquarters to the Williamsburg bridge."

"Pariah, right."

"Undoubtedly. Even worse, that day's border patrol on the bridge apparently went psychotic as soon as they got back to base, attacked everything in sight. Had to burn a lot of our own that day." He paused. "You know, Manhattan is a major business center. But Brooklyn is mainly residential."

"And?"

Cross snorted. "I don't know, thought that might actually mean something to you. Guess not."

"What do you want me to do about it? Break down in tears? I can't save all of them. _You_ can't save all of them, and that's your job. Me, I was built to _destroy_ them. And it's something I'm damn good at doing even when I'm trying not to."

A sharp note entered the captain's voice. "If you start going through with that, we're going to have problems, Mercer."

"Don't have an aneurysm, Cross. I'm not my creator. And if you start trying to kill me over something I said, I'm going to have to off you."

"You sound like you're not that enamored to the idea," Cross noted. "I always thought you were jumping at the bit to bite into my head as soon as I stop being useful."

"I don't get attached," Mercer growled. "It would just be a pain in the ass if you went and died on me."

"Yeah, yeah. Keep telling yourself that. Next thing you know, you're going to be asking me if you can sign up for the team." Upon hearing the snarl that reverberated over the line, he backpedaled. _That's what you get for trying to be friendly…_ Familiarity was a great way to get new recruits to ease up around him, but Alex Mercer didn't follow the same set of reactions as most everyone else. The viral monster occasionally showed hints of a rather sardonic sense of humor, but never seemed to be able to tell when anyone wasn't being completely literal to him. "Relax, Mercer. Joking. I'm not delusional. The day you'd voluntarily join Blackwatch is the day they'd start selling Girl Scout cookies for charity."

"What the hell is a Girl Scout cookie?" The Blacklight virus was clearly annoyed.

"Never mind, never mind. Learn to take a fucking joke… We've got a strict 'no people-eating crazy fucks allowed' policy anyway. Heh." His voice turned sober. "Can't say I've been following that rule very well lately."

"Hmph, well. Whatever gets the job done."

"Yeah," Cross sighed, looking out at the cloudy dusk sky. "Indeed."

0o0o0

"You done?" Dana asked rhetorically as Alex came back into the living room. "What did he want, anyway?"

"Info," the monster sighed. "And to yell at me. Whatever." He frowned, racking his memories for something _normal_ to say. "…How was your day?"

"Boring as hell." Her mouth twisted. "Coffee and computers. And phone calls from stalking assholes. Feel kinda locked up. You know?"

That was a loaded question, and he knew it – from the way she was looking at him, _she_ knew it perfectly well too. But he wasn't being hypocritical. It wasn't the _same_. Her body was weak and delicate. It didn't roil and seethe with the need to sprint and jump and shift and tear and _consume._ He could look after himself; he was _built_ to look after himself. She wasn't. "Trust me, Dana, you do not want to be going outside right now."

"Yeah, yeah, sure," she sighed, rolling her eyes and shaking her head for good measure. "I get it. I'm fragile, you don't want to risk me getting killed by a little old lady and her pack of rabid Chihuahuas."

Alex's brow furrowed in confusion. He hadn't been aware of the fact that old ladies were dangerous. Had he been taking risks, paying them minimal attention when he did go out for walks with his sister? At the same time, a large portion of his memories seemed convinced that pouncing on and slaughtering the elderly was a Bad Thing. Neither did they seem to have much reference for said danger presented by aged persons, but he trusted Dana's word. He was going to have to observe some of them more closely in the future.

She gave up on waiting for a reply. "Well, get me some chips the next time you're out. I'm running low. Not now, you asshole!" she called as Alex turned for the door. "You just got home. Don't even _think_ about trying to sneak out."

_How am I supposed to do that?_ he wondered glumly. Every subconscious thought was focused on all the things he could be doing, killing, and eating at the moment. It was almost as bad as the voices.

His interest perked at Dana's next words, though. "There's something I've got to show you anyways. Found something today. It's not much, but, well, it's… _interesting._" The sideways look she gave him as she led him over to her personal computer implied that it was the same sort of 'interesting' as his feeder tendrils and shapeshifting.

"Pariah?" he asked, and she nodded.

Dana knew Alex just well enough to see the curiosity beneath his eternally austere expression. She was glad, and more than a little proud, that she finally had something to contribute.

She took her place in her computer chair, and her brother hovered behind her. "It's not extensive reports or anything," she admitted as she flicked through some of her files. "It might even be something you've seen already. But it did prove to me that Blackwatch was trying to experiment on Pariah in the mid-seventies, and it, well… look for yourself."

He did; she had opened up a frozen screen of a video. It was old; black and white, grainy, and out of focus, but he could still pick out an enclosure he'd seen a glimpse of once, in a fleeting memory. Alex's frown deepened. "Where did you find this?"

"Blacknet. Buried under a ridiculous amount of shit, too. Now watch."

He leaned forward as the video played out. From the angle, it seemed to be a security camera. He couldn't see outside the little room, and the doors – or airlock – were not in this particular camera's range. The room itself was relatively bare, with a few blocks and children's toys scattered around, looking morbidly out of place against the thin tendrils that covered one corner of the room's flooring. At the very corner, where the biomass coating was thickest, a child sat, hugging his knees.

Pariah looked up, eyeing something off the screen, and fluidly stood, taking a few steps closer to the room's center. Mercer's attention was diverted when somebody walked in from that direction, completely enshrouded in white protective gear. He crossed over to Pariah; the child's mouth moved, but the recording had no sound. The two appeared to exchange words for a minute before the scientist removed a few syringes; either injecting Pariah with something or taking samples, it wasn't clear. The subject took this in stride, being patient throughout the whole process. The only sign of any discomfort was when he once reached to clasp the researcher's arm during one of the shots.

Work done, the man motioned to Pariah, who slid back into his corner. He turned around to leave and abruptly doubled over, arms jerking spastically. Alex's eyes narrowed as the scientist fell to his knees, his suit splitting to reveal discolored blotches and tumors in the process of erupting out. Lights from some alarm began to flash in the room as the man violently succumbed to the disease, clawing away the rest of his suit with fingers that wriggled like tendrils.

Then a series of shots flashed from the doorway, and the spasming, newly turned Infected thrashed a few more times before falling still. The last thing Alex noticed was Pariah's chilling smile before the recording ended.

"Well," he coughed, breaking the silence. "That was…"

"Weird? Disturbing? Horrifying? Sanity-dissolving? Tentacley?"

"I was going to say new, but I guess those work too."

Dana sighed. "You and your tentacles. I swear, nothing bothers you."

That wasn't quite true – things like mouthwash and shopping and soap and children all bothered him, but it was always better not to mention those things in lieu of risking Dana getting one of her ideas.

"Anyway, Pariah was actually five or six at this point, but he was still a clever bastard. Look."

His sister rewound to the scientist's first appearance and zoomed in. At first, Alex didn't know what he was supposed to be looking at, but after several frames, it became apparent that what he thought was the effect of static and shifting grains was a consistent, thin line on the suit's arm. A minute scratch, a loose seam – nothing more. And Pariah's fingers gripped it, like the reassurance-needing child that he clearly was not.

"The guy wasn't protected," Dana said. "Not enough. Just a little break in the fabric, and then… this."

Indeed. That was something he knew all too well. His memories spoke of untold horror at having squadmates disappear off duty, or worse, start showing the signs in front of them. Torn three ways between loyalty, fear, and duty.

"Look at how fast it happened. I'm not an expert on this weird Redlight shit, but isn't it supposed to take days to turn somebody into a zombie? Not a few fucking seconds! It's like watching The Thing in fast forward."

"Pariah is the perfect incarnation of the Redlight virus," Alex muttered, so quietly that Dana had to turn and ask him to repeat it.

What he didn't say aloud was that he had a better comparison than some movie that a few of his memories linked to their beliefs about Zeus, and a far less comfortable one. What he considered feeding was actually a form of reproduction – he infected his prey with a fast-acting strain of Blacklight, then pulled their newly converted mass within him, similar in some ways to a spider liquefying its prey before dining. But faster. So much faster. He could melt a person into raw biomass in a matter of seconds, their body utterly flooded with the virus…

After failing to get a response, coupled with that familiar distant expression under her brother's hood, she acknowledged that Alex was lost in thought and probably wanted some time to noodle stuff out. She yawned. "I think I'm going to go to bed in an hour. Fell asleep at five last night and got up at seven. Damn, today's been one hell of a day, hasn't it? I'm going to change. Are you going to hang around or take off again? You seemed to want to bail out of here as soon as you could."

He did, but acknowledging the twinge of guilt that came along with that – Alex was relatively sure the sleepless night had been on his behalf – he decided that he owed her that much time together. "Give me a second. I want to take another look at this, then I'll be there."

Dana shrugged and stood up. "All right." She gave him a quick pat on the shoulder, feeling him begin to jerk away on impulse before slowly, tentatively leaning into her hand. "See you in a few."

"Thanks, Dana." He paused. "I know this stuff can't have been easy to find. I really appreciate it, but look after yourself, all right?"

"Hey, what can I say? I'm just that good."

Alex slid into the newly vacated chair – warm, but still a few degrees cooler than what he considered natural. He gazed at the screen, watching the hapless scientist contort into monstrous biomass over and over again without really seeing it. Once had been enough to make him start thinking. He'd only been able to eat a few of the tops of Gentek's hierarchy – not many of them were deployed into the field in crisis situations. But the few he did have were privy to many tests, and the same conclusions that they'd drawn from them. Pariah was supposed to be the perfect incarnation of the virus. He knew from his own experience that the virus was… not sentient, but aware on some level, a puppeteer with enough forethought to bide its time for four decades. For as weak as he physically seemed, Pariah was supposedly everything it wanted to achieve. Blacklight, on the other hand… he was supposed to be genetically engineered perfection, the piece de resistance of a mad scientist. A bittersweet gift at best, but something that had secured his place at the top of the food chain and let him cripple an Infected army by himself. Pariah was the natural release of powers he'd had unlocked by artificially activating previously unused stretches of DNA.

Yet it couldn't be exactly the same, because Pariah displayed none of his physical power. He was very fast, true, but Alex had seen nothing of his strength or regeneration. The way he avoided damage seemed to suggest that he couldn't shrug it off like Alex could; if he had wanted to prove his strength to the younger viral monster, effortlessly taking hits would have been far more effective than calling up Hydras to block them. Pariah was the master of the hivemind, but Greene had been that too. That couldn't have been everything special, couldn't have been the entirety of what those mysterious hidden genes that only they shared constituted.

And he was having enough trouble with just the hivemind bullshit.

He remembered the words of yet another Gentek scientist, now nearly three months dead. _"I have a feeling it might be extraordinarily bad if they ever met, face to face."_

Looking back, he couldn't help but agree.


	13. Raining Fire

Captain Robert Cross rarely left the briefing room in a good mood. Today was no exception.

It was, however, a candidate for one of the worst moods he had ever found himself in on his way out of getting an assignment. Everything before Manhattan seemed pretty pathetic in comparison to all the shit the Wisemen had been put through in the past three months, but he wasn't sure that even finding out that he had to ambush and engage Alex Mercer in the middle of an active _Hive_ had left him this pissed off. And hell knew where_ that_ one had led him – the greatest fucking failure of his career. Ninety percent mortality rate, with only himself and three others surviving. Detwiller had managed to get out with only superficial injuries, but Winder was only just out of his casts and Matthews had been reduced to a gibbering wreck. The captain had signed the papers himself – as soon as he got out of rehab, Matthews was getting sent home; the man didn't need to get thrown back into the field after getting shaken apart that badly. He snorted to himself. The great Cross, always looking after his men. Too little and too late.

He'd rebuilt the Wisemen, knew each of the nineteen – now eighteen – new members as well as he knew his reflection, but it didn't erase that black stain on its past. It wasn't even that he was working with roughly half the force he used to have – he could get inured to that, work around it. It was that he'd lost nearly everyone. That for all of his planning and forethought, he'd failed nearly everyone under his wing. Objectively, he knew it was a mistake to get attached to the people he worked with; as a soldier, definitely, and as Blackwatch, even moreso. Working with the elite did lend his squad higher survival rates than usual, but when you fought the nastiest, off-the-radar threats that the country had to face, death _happened – _and maybe he was weak, but he just couldn't get used to it.

Another commanding officer he had spoken to had seemed to hold that opinion – if anything, he'd been bemused that Cross could still manage to care so much after all his time in service. He'd sounded as though he was genuinely used to replacing lost faces with more faces… but the captain just couldn't think of it that way. He was entrusted with looking after his team, keeping them alive. He had his new Wisemen to protect, but that didn't just erase the thirty-five letters he'd penned out in one night, letters to put mothers to tears and break new widows' hearts.

It wasn't a position he ever wanted to find himself in again. But _this_…

By this point, heading back to inform his team of their next job, he was usually already forming battle plans, going over a map of the target location in his head and plotting out every possible course of movement, the positions he could place his men at, likely enemy concentrations, and so on. In modes of thinking, though, Cross hadn't quite yet made the usual transition. His mind was stuck in a loop, one single question playing over and over again with no solid answer in sight.

_Is Red Crown trying to get me killed?_

It was not a rhetorical question, as many soldiers were like to pose along the more dangerous lines of duty. But it wasn't an expectation either; it was something that didn't seem wholly likely but was too possible to be considered a paranoid assumption anymore. Which begged the question – Detrick was running out of troops to give, but were they really _this_ short-staffed? Was it a suicide mission or did command actually think he could handle it?

It all boiled down to one thing. Had he been found? _Could _he have been found? He had covered his tracks with Samson flawlessly, of that he was certain – and the following turmoil with Pariah almost guaranteed no resources would be spent on solving a crime that already had an answer.

But he would be a fool to think that his recent record looked completely innocent. He'd done all he could to cement his alibi with Blackwatch, but he simply had made too many exceptions in order to work with Mercer. He had too much time spent off the record, too many missions that had been completed in unsatisfactorily-explained ways, and he did have a record of having Zeus appear on the site while he was working. He had more clean missions than not, more by far – but those dots were right there, and he was painfully aware that if anyone in the currently blurry hierarchy decided to investigate him, he was absolutely fucked.

Perhaps it was because he realized how deep the hole he stood in was, that he had become so willing to dig it deeper.

It had sounded simple enough, at first. An armored Hive had emerged near Times Square, something that hadn't been seen since the heart of Greene's infection. The Wisemen were to clear out the surrounding area so that a thermobaric tank could be moved in and survive long enough to blow the thing to hell.

Then he'd asked what backup and vehicles his team would be receiving. Smoothly as ever, he'd been told that there was none to be had.

Nineteen men – eighteen ordinary men and one enhanced, if he wanted to make it sound marginally better – had been tasked to clear a hive by themselves. An armored hive. By. Themselves. What the _fuck_.

If he didn't know any better, he'd have said it was a suicide mission. As it was, he _did _know better and he still couldn't make the call on that one.

But he had his orders. And in Blackwatch, you didn't question your orders.

He didn't want to bring Mercer into things again – damn it, it wasn't even completely about getting caught any more. He didn't _want_ to rely on Zeus, Gentek's pet monster gone renegade. He didn't _want_ to force his team to work with something that was as like to eat them as he was to fight alongside them. He didn't _want_ to need somebody else to keep his squadron alive.

And he knew he had a choice, but it was a joke of one. The Wisemen were the best of the best, but this? This was suicide. The Infection was gaining strength rapidly, and there were unknowns thrown into the mix now – things he didn't know how to handle along with the difficult things he did. Even if they didn't all end up dead, there was no way every member of his team was walking alive out of this.

What was more catastrophic? The chance that he would be found out, or the chance that his entire squad would be destroyed?

Of course, being found wouldn't let his men off freely, and that made the choice more difficult than he'd have liked. Cross wasn't a selfless man, but he knew duty and he knew the value of all the lives he'd been entrusted with. He'd already lost Forsey, and that was far too much. Hell, he'd lost nearly all of his team at Mercer's tentacles. Self-defense or not, that was something he doubted he'd ever forgive the Blacklight virus for.

Yet he worked alongside him nonetheless, and the Wisemen were all accomplices to his actions. He knew what a fine line he walked, but his men's lives were worth treading the knife's edge. He'd told them to denounce their captain if the worst ever came to fruition, to all swear that Mercer had threatened to infect them and make them spies otherwise. He did not feel any guilt about dragging Mercer into those hypothetical explanations. Blackwatch did not tolerate weakness – if Cross had threatened his team with death or working with their worst enemy, then they were expected to have chosen death. This was the best way he could think of that allowed his team to keep a shred of honor in the worst case scenario – death or _becoming a threat_ to Blackwatch.

He just had to pray his men wouldn't try to defend him.

There was also the chance that he wouldn't be found, or the chance his team could singlehandedly take down the hive. He was not banking on the second. The first… he just had to hope his streak of luck continued.

He was going to need to take Zeus up on his offer.

0o0o0

Alex watched from the rooftops – silent, a statue with keen, raking eyes. The midday heat of the summer was long past; the air remained cool and now a touch _irritatingly_ damp, even at high noon. The humidity was enough to make his surface area prickle uncomfortably, but it did not register to the hunter. His attention was held elsewhere. His targets were in plain sight, unaware of the monster that tracked them. Even if they had known, what could they have done to escape his notice? The city was his kingdom; whether crawling with tendrils or uninfected masses, he knew every rise and shadow intimately.

They moved slowly through the crowds, even more so than the sluggish speed that was bound to occur in the confusion and desynchronization that came with hundreds of humans all trying to fit in a small area. A male and a female – a man and a woman, he corrected himself, since Dana scolded him on speaking like that and sounding like a scientist was something he wanted to avoid anyway. Still, it was hard _not_ to feel like he was analyzing them from on high, because that was exactly what he was doing. Observing. And nothing would get past him.

They stayed close together. That was unlike most operatives he knew; Blackwatch tended to keep its undercover agents spread apart, to maximize surveillance or coverage and minimize losses if one was found out. The speed, too, was unbefitting. Too slow, not purposeful enough. It was possible that they were lounging around only to _seem_ innocent, but they weren't blending into the crowd so much as holding it up.

They walked. And walked some more. Any moment now, and they were going to… walk some more, apparently. His scowl had gradually morphed from one of distrust to one of frustrated anticipation, and finally of boredom over the course of his watch.

Sudden movement. The woman was reaching into her bag! His stare sharpened; it could be anything. A grenade, a bomb, a concealed weapon, or a… he squinted… hairbrush. Huh. It looked spiky enough at one end, he supposed, but she wasn't slashing at anyone with it. Dana sometimes threw one of those things at him. It didn't seem to be very dangerous, but he knew that many things that he hardly noticed were dangerous or even lethal to a normal person. He turned away as she began to run it through her hair, adjusting his hood to keep the sun out of his eyes.

Yeah, looking at the sky, it was definitely close to noon. He had places to be. Time to wrap things up.

When he looked back, the pair was near the end of the street. They turned the corner and vanished from his line of sight without incident.

Mercer sighed and leaned back. Adding those two to the count, that made seventeen elderly citizens, and not one of them had the good graces to be perceptibly terrifying, vicious, or even mildly aggressive. The jury was still out on Chihuahuas, whatever the hell those were. His memories painted pictures of a breed of canine that was about as long as his forearm fully-grown, but he was entirely at a loss as to something _that_ fragile-looking could ever pose a danger to a human.

Unless… he was beginning to think that maybe this had been another one of Dana's 'literary device' things. Huh. Best not to mention this whole thing to her, then.

He shrugged and pulled back from the roof's edge. Cross needed his help, and more importantly, Dana wanted snacks. Alex had never been quite clueless enough to think that she'd appreciate _his_ kind of snacks, and had asked for some specifics early on. He had the particular brands memorized with scientific precision now – Cheetos, Lays, Ridges, Pringles, several things that ended with 'ito'. No barbeque or ranch, under pain of death.

Cross wanted him to kill things, which was a little more fun, but his favorite kind of supermarket had just opened up not too far southwest of their apartment; an abandoned one. No shoppers, no infuriatingly pushy people bludgeoning him with carts, painfully unaware that each fleeting bodily contact they made with an angry guy in a hood was an invitation for his tendrils to lash out and assimilate them. Just a handy sign that warned shoppers away from rising local levels of infection and pointed out where to find the grocery's temporary relocation. It was amazing, he thought, that a little sheet of metal with words was so much more effective at warning people to stay away than thrashing tentacles and biomass growths. Either Dana's occasional rambles about the power of the written word were actually valid, or humans were just so out of touch with their instincts that they needed to be outwardly told when they were supposed to run away.

Given all he'd seen, he was inclined to think the latter.

He was only a few blocks east of the store, and it was best that he got that done now, while he still remembered to. This was not something he could afford to fail. Some things were just not meant to be trifled with. As far as Alex was concerned, this list included thermobaric tanks, fire hydrants, and Dana at its very top.

Two minutes later, Alex could thankfully say that no thermobaric tanks had patrolled the streets between his position then and his location now, and he had not been foolish enough to try and wrench one of the funny-looking red things out of the sidewalk as a makeshift projectile. Not that he took the sidewalk anyway, but Alex had learned his lesson if nothing else, and was thoroughly prepared to quash any urge to dip down to street level and get blasted by a high-pressure stream of pain, should one arise.

He peered down. Store in sight, no army presence, and sparsely populated sidewalks. Ideal. Maybe this whole area was being warned off – he wasn't used to such thin crowds. He paced lengthwise along the rooftops, searching for a wide enough empty stretch where he could fall without crushing somebody. That was always more trouble than it was worth.

"_Prey,"_ something whispered in his mind, and he gave his head an irritable jerk. Was he ever going to condition himself out of his worse instincts? He thought he'd been making progress there, but apparently he wasn't as good as he thought.

His search took him a few buildings over, but he at last found an opening in the shifting trickle of foot traffic and dropped to the street, ignoring the startled cries that tended to emerge when a viral monstrosity in human skin fell from the sky and cracked the pavement. Sometimes, he thought it might be worth coming down silently and discreetly to avoid the stragglers that sometimes followed him, asking him if he was okay or wanting to know how the fuck he did that. It was even worse when there were police officers around. He was pretty vigilant when it came to scanning for military, but the guys in blue caps just didn't strike the same warning bells.

It hadn't been enough of an annoyance to make him change his ways yet, though, and this was no different. Most of Manhattan's denizens had the good grace to be completely absorbed in their own business – or perhaps three months of continual crazy shit had deadened their confusion. He brushed aside one young man that seemed to be talking to him, making it a full-blown shove when his point failed to get across, and stalked away, heading up towards the supermarket. The sliding doors were unresponsive – he forced his hands through and wrenched them open, carefully setting down a maimed pane when one of the doors popped out of its slot entirely. See? He could do gentle. Let Dana complain about _that_.

It was dark inside; the building was devoid of the usual shoppers and staff, but it hadn't fallen apart; the only sign of its disuse was the thin layer of dust that his footsteps stirred. The only light streamed in from the windows among the front walls, which quickly faded into shadow among the numerous aisles and rows of shelves, still half-stocked. Thankfully, no visible signs of the Infection had risen to lend credence to the evacuation; everything was, if not clean, at least not covered with tendrils.

He pushed past stacks of carts, glancing up at a ceiling-mounted camera. Judging by the real-time monitor next to it, it was still active. Some whimsical fragment of his mind wanted to give it an impish wave, but he simply scowled and took a few steps past it. Getting caught shoplifting was inconsequential beyond definition compared to the rest of his crimes. If the police wanted to apprehend Alexander J. Mercer, they'd need to get in line behind Blackwatch, the Marines, and possibly a few government intelligence agencies. And the fine would need to be tacked onto the end of the tens-of-billions dollars he'd owe in damage reparations, which was not something he ever intended on paying. Access to at least a hundred still-functioning bank accounts of Manhattan residents aside, that was way out of his fiscal league. Let Blackwatch cover up its own messes.

On the other hand, what if somebody else wanted to get groceries without putting up with the usual insufferable masses of people? Not everyone had his complete immunity to law enforcement. After a moment's thought, he hoisted up one of the carts and threw it at the camera; it and the screen exploded into bits of glass.

His good deed for the day done, he continued in, sweeping the darkness for heat signatures. There was nothing to be found. In comparison to other times he'd found himself in these accursed buildings, this one seemed poorly stocked – either they'd taken the time to move a considerable amount of supplies to their new location, or he hadn't been the first looter to try his luck in here.

He tried his best to remember the scent of Dana's snacks. Even abandoned – no, especially abandoned – these places were always hell on his nose. Too much conflicting information from all directions – sweet and salt, stale and oily, rubber, plastic, the harshness of antiseptics that he could practically feel. He even picked up the familiar smell of rotting meat wafting from one section. Clearly, the coolers were out of backup power. His lip curled. …It still smelled better than that 'sour cream' dip, though.

A quick scan in his infected vision proved that the food was free of contamination; once again, his eyesight flickered back to the normal spectrum as he wandered forward. Alex was excellent at treading carefully, all things considered, but he still weighed too much for quiet footsteps; clacking echoes snapped through the dusty air. It got darker as he moved farther into the store, enough so that when he finally reached the shelves that carried his target, he had to fine-tune his eyes in order to read the labels without difficulty.

Chips were looted meticulously. The first can of Pringles he found was hastily put back when he recognized the 'Barbeque' label on the front of it; he did not want to risk invoking Dana's wrath with the wrong sort of chemical mixture on her apparently delicious plant-based foodstuffs. Two more were returned to the shelves and a third was smashed upon the floor before he finally found a row of less offensive flavors.

He eventually made off with a large bag of plain Lays chips and two cans of pizza Pringles – something he didn't understand, given that his memories painted a pizza as a large and generally loaded food object that shouldn't have been able to fit in such a thin can. After a few seconds' thought, he lifted the can to eye level and read more closely. Apparently, it was full of chips that tasted like pizza. He still didn't get it. If somebody wanted a pizza, why would they get chips instead of eating a pizza? _Humans_. Whatever.

His sister's errand aside, he could get on with Cross's task. Times Square… He turned his eyes south, remembering the time a misshapen monster had erupted from the street. It seemed like Manhattan's famed heart was destined to serve as a core for the Infection yet again. He wondered if Pariah was going for some kind of stupid symbolism with it, or if the place was just useful again due to another factor like its central location or the high population flow.

But if there was an armored Hive in the area, there couldn't be any civilians passing through. It wasn't that they were capable of pulling their heads out of their asses and _not_ strolling into an area only marginally more safe than a firing range; Alex had no faith that humanity was ever going to figure that one out. But Hives were protected, and any squishy humans meandering around were going to get mauled, eaten, or mauled and then eaten. Redlight as a virus existed to spread, but the creatures it created seemed just as happy to kill a potential carrier as they were to infect it.

Finding Cross wasn't difficult. The location was _very_ well-traversed by him – the diversity of low buildings and skyscrapers, dotted with erratic billboard shapes, created an enjoyable place to practice whenever he got bored, though this wasn't the time for it. He hadn't been aware of an armored Hive appearing so soon, and in truth, it unsettled him, but that was irrelevant for now; all that mattered was that he was looking for an armored Hive, and that kind of thing was hard to miss. He didn't even have to rely on his sense of smell to track him and his team; it was more of a matter of _feeling_ the infection and following where it thickened, saturating the ground and filling the air until it grew strong enough to visibly thrive. It was a tangible thing to him, something he could feel and taste long before anyone else seemed to notice.

However, as he peered down from one of the taller buildings in the square, he found himself disappointed. The Hive wasn't located in Times Square itself, but a few blocks off from the hub; far enough for the skyline to be noticeably lower than the island's grand center. Erratic ground played to his strengths, and the target area looked pretty generic. He leapt to another building, shorter but closer, for a better look. It looked like something was under construction – probably being rebuilt, there was a lot of that going on in Manhattan. Well, that was a little better. All of the exposed bars and planks might end up being useful.

A few buildings down from the construction site, he spotted a group of nearly twenty, spread out across the space of two rooftops. He smiled grimly to himself; truly, there was nothing like some good bloodshed.

"_Prey_," something in his head whispered again, and his eyes narrowed. He had no love for Blackwatch, but Cross was an ally, and his men were off limits by extension. And yet, for a few seconds there, something about them had distinctly felt like _enemy_, something for him to rip and shred until no more threat was present. His mouth flattened into a hard line; he was slipping today. He was hungry, yes, but he was always hungry – that was a burn that smoldered quietly at the best of times and raged at the worst, and right now, he definitely wasn't starved enough to merit going completely fucking insane.

He cupped a hand against his forehead. _Get it together, Mercer._

When he was certain that he was in his right mind, he jumped down to the clustered, relatively even rows of roofs below, slipping into a glide as he fell in order to avoid crashing straight through whatever structure he landed upon. It still cracked dangerously when he impacted, but he was already gone, bounding across the rooftops until he was close enough to the Captain's position to skid to a stop. The shocked voices that rose in response to his entrance – and the shower of debris that accompanied it – were momentarily gratifying.

"I'm here," he grated, tossing the bags down.

Cross looked down to the containers at his feet, then back up to the viral monstrosity. Then back to the chips again, looking a shade more skeptical and considerably less like he expected them to sprout tentacles and try to eat him.

"What the…" He shook his head, confused. "Hungry, Mercer?"

"Dana wanted them," he replied gruffly.

The silence that briefly followed that was not the usual death glare, mutual I-seriously-want-to-see-you-die silence that tended to run between him and the Wisemen. He couldn't see their faces, as always, but he could tell they were all looking at him and there was something off about it. This silence was bemused, vaguely reminding him of the times Dana would look at him whenever he said or did something inhuman but not too disturbing. Discomfiture grew into a weird pit of anger somewhere in his stomach as the moment dragged on. Yes, that was Dana's look – and Cross and his damnable team didn't have the _right_ to look at him like that. That was _hers_.

Unwilling to deal with the strangely infuriating attention for any longer, he broke away from Cross's incredulous stare, suddenly highly interested in a loose bit of concrete down by his foot.

"Just hold onto these, okay?" he muttered. "You do not want to see my sister when she doesn't have this stuff around."

There was another awkward pause before Cross cleared his throat. "Fine. Whatever. The plan is to hold position anyway." He gave his head a slight shake, indicating the Hive in the distance. "We can do that as long as you keep anything big from climbing up. Once the hard-hitters have been thinned, we'll move in and clear the rest. Then I'll call in fire support and you'll get the fuck out of here."

Mercer nodded and leaned down to pick up the snacks again. "Where are you setting up?"

"There." Cross jerked a thumb, pointing at a rooftop among the flat buildings further down the street. "The second one from the end of the block."

Alex turned his sharp gaze onto the indicated roof. "Low," he observed. "Quickly climbed. And that high one behind it is an obvious ambush point."

"Hmph." The captain wasn't amused. "Not all of us can run up walls. And not all of us can jump down sixty stories and go out for coffee afterwards, either. If we set up from a high-rise, getting down takes too long in a crisis situation. I've watched a single hydra kill a squad of snipers on a skyscraper. Beat the base to shit; none of those poor fucks had a chance." He shook his head. "And you think we can't cover that? That's what part of working in a team _is_, Mercer. More people, more eyes. I don't care how alert you are, you're never going to cover as much space as nineteen."

"And I've got better senses than all of you put together." The virus hunched his shoulders and kicked the piece of concrete aside. "If you're done with your little pep talk, let's go. You're making me wait on lunch."

Without waiting for a response, he bent his knees and leapt to the next roof over. Before he made the next jump, he glanced back over his shoulder. Cross was giving him the finger; he smirked. He quickly cut ahead when they began to move, keeping at least two buildings between himself and the squadron. Their open hostility always called out to his own, and it was still pretty taxing to stand next to them without making Blackwatch puree. Letting threats live wasn't his way, and for all his inability to pick up on the majority of human expression, he could_ feel_ when somebody wanted to put him down.

The target rooftop was only a few buildings ahead, so he slowed down to a brisk pace. He rolled his shoulders once and looked back. The team was a decent ways behind now. They moved so slowly, so gingerly – carefully measuring the small gaps between buildings. They had to prepare themselves to take such a tiny jump! Nothing like his own predator's grace. How could they ever survive against the Infected hordes?

He could have done dozens of laps back and forth in the time it took for them to move from point A to point B, but Cross probably would have given him hell for it. So he remained relatively still as the Wisemen finally made it to the target rooftop and began to set up, distributing weapons and stationing themselves in rough lines along the building's edges, more thickly on the one that overlooked the street.

Cross said little, watching the preparations from a spot that could loosely be considered 'next' to him. Occasionally, the man would fiddle with his blasted shock baton or tweak the visor he never seemed to wear.

"Well, we're all here." Alex gestured to the armored hive. "Ready to move in?"

"We're not moving. I can't wade in there with eighteen men and expect to make it. I need you back here to prevent anything from getting too close."

"Can't you look after yourselves?" the hooded man growled. "I can't do anything useful from here. Waste of my talents."

"You'll get to run around and wreak hell in a few minutes," Cross snapped. "Stalkers like to ambush early on. I want you here when that happens."

He was saved from Mercer's retort when the monster stiffened like a terrier spotting a squirrel. Without prompt, he grabbed one of the extra weapons and hurled it over the building's edge. A wet _thunk_ was heard an instant later.

"That's not how you use a gun, Mercer."

Alex ignored the captain, peering over the side. "Might want to hurry it up. They're coming."

"No shit. And stop wasting my guns."

The virus was rummaging through the spares again. "What? It was just one of those shitty ones anyway; not like it was good for anything. This, on the other hand…" He stood up again, a rocket launcher cradled against his chest and a distinctly unsettling grin plastered on his face. "Me and Javvy are _great _friends."

The captain shook his head. "I'll just add pyromania to your list of neuroses, then."

"I blame all the ones I've eaten," Alex deadpanned, stalking over to the edge again. He tilted his head a shade, then fired into the slowly growing crowd of Walkers. "Hah. Beautiful."

"Don't even think about using that at close range," the Specialist warned.

That damnable grin grew. "That's what the tentacles are for."

"Captain," Black cut in. "Permission to shoot?"

"Mercer?" Cross rubbed his eyes. "Try to make it look like an accident."

The private chuckled. "I meant the other bastards, but that works too."

"Oh. Ugh. Mercer, quit fucking distracting me. Yes, Wisemen, we're starting now. Sullivan, Krausch, I want you keeping watch on the rear wall. Everyone else is on long-distance crowd clearing. Mercer, please try to remember that there is only one asshole here that can take a Javelin at close range, and we both know who that is. And I'll let you know when you can go, so don't try to run off before then or _so help me God_ I will kick your ass later. Are we clear?"

There was a chorus of eighteen "Yes, sir!"s and one snort.

The common Walkers that had crowded around the building's front were quickly dispatched. Being unable to climb, they posed no real threat anyway – the occasional evolved variant might start scaling the wall, but would always get picked off by a bullet or explosive.

For a short while, Alex was left with nothing to do but watch the others. Each soldier kept their eyes and guns strictly on their appointed ground to cover, with Cross and him at the center. There was no looking back, no flinching at sudden noises – they had to trust each other enormously for that, to entrust the team as a whole to watch their backs. Alex was used to analyzing groups, in that he knew how to pick out isolated members and locate the chain of command. But he'd never just sat back before and observed the very basis of how the human race survived.

They weren't even eyeing him as the threat they always saw. Did this make him, just for this instant, a part of the group…?

A Hunter's call rumbled in his ears, and he strode to the edge, pushing two Wisemen aside to make a space for himself. Mercer might have preferred the frenzy of close combat, but a mesh of countless soldiers' experiences lent him a master's skill at using several types of weapons. How to compensate for recoil, gauging the speed of the rocket and the path his target took, steadiness and aim – none of them had been good at everything, but he stole their best parts like he had stolen their flesh, and he watched his rocket blaze down and collide directly with the Hunter's face. The tanklike Infected reared back, howling, and a sheet of bullets from beside him finished it off.

"You do your job and let us do ours," the soldier nearest to him grumbled.

"Shut up and shoot, Detwiller," barked the one besides him, not looking up from his scope.

Alex gave the one called Detwiller a shove as he backed up, returning to his impromptu position in the center. He went through most of his missiles over the next few minutes, but he wasn't able to do much from the rooftop – the Wisemen did a good job at keeping anything on the ground from getting close.

A screech rang out from above, and Alex's head whipped up in tandem with the entire team's. A Stalker was perched on the edge of the building behind them.

That one went down before it had a chance to leap; two different Wisemen simultaneously went for headshots, and neither missed. But as it toppled two more of the beasts pounced down, shrieking with rage.

These ones had _tails_, Alex dimly noted. They were short, still rather stubby near the end, but the ones he'd seen over the past two days definitely hadn't. There wasn't much time to stop and observe them, but the legs looked more even, too, albeit still far from pretty. Pariah and Greene had to be working themselves overdrive to evolve everything so quickly…

Not that it was ever likely to make a difference against the very avatar of evolution. He tossed his Javelin aside and dove for the closer one, only for it to be cleanly sniped through the chest and not-so-cleanly hit with a propelled grenade at the same time. There was no time to pull back, and he was caught in the explosion, tossed back a few feet. He growled as he stood back up, flicking the gore off his shoulders.

_Bastards stole my kill_.

He turned his eyes to the other. It was getting dispatched just as quickly, but it had gotten much closer to the Wisemen, nearly at the edge of their group. Another grenade detonated as he watched, blasting the creature's misshapen legs off… and knocking the nearest black-clad figure off his feet and sprawling towards the edge of the building.

It happened in an instant. There was one flashing moment to process what he was seeing, and then the lightning-fast reaction. He hurled himself towards the edge, right arm crawling into a more whiplike shape. Even in the heat of the moment, all the vital details were frozen in time; the Wiseman's legs and the base of his spine were still on solid ground, but his torso and center of gravity were not.

His whip wrapped around the other man's midsection as he began to fall, legs angling upwards in a manner that might have been comical in any other situation. The Wiseman barely had time to give an admittedly undignified cry before he was hauled back to safe ground, hoisted upright by a writhing mass of black tentacles that was definitely new to this kind of work.

Blue eyes met blue lenses for a few shuddering seconds before reality hit Mercer like a brick. More accurately, it hit him like a series of bricks shaped into the words '_wait, what?'_ It took him a few more moments before he recognized that not only had he protected the man, but he was _still holding _onto him. And not killing him. And not planning to kill him. His whipfist flicked open as if scalded, and the soldier fell to his knees awkwardly. Another moment and Alex had leapt backwards, as far away from them as the roof would allow. He was staring at the team with utter confusion scrawled across his face, and while masks hid most of their expressions, their gazes fell between their nearly-injured teammate and his unlikely rescuer with equal amazement.

He didn't understand _why_. He knew, distantly, that he saved the Wiseman, like he knew that there was a world outside the waters of the bay and that there were over seven billion people on the planet. A fact, but abstract; he could comprehend the words, but it was difficult to grasp. He'd saved the soldier, but he had no particular feelings for whoever this man was – Detwiller, he thought – beyond his general hatred for Blackwatch. He knew he would have protected Dana without hesitating – once upon a time, Karen Parker too – and perhaps Cross, if the veteran was ever foolish enough to get caught in such a situation – but this was somebody who, frankly, Alex would not have been at all opposed to seeing dead, and he'd prevented that from happening anyway. Assisting them or not, he wasn't _one_ of them. Hell, it wasn't like he would have been blamed for _not_ catching the guy. Why had he done it?

He hadn't thought. Movement in the corner of his vision, a slip, a yell, and it was all instinct from there. He was familiar with instinct, perhaps too much so. Whatever neural system he had was tied to his impulses with steel cables – the drive to hunt, to kill, to infect, the guiding hand that shaped his plans in combat and kept tabs on everything outside his field of view. And this… wasn't it. Even as he'd dove forward, forming his whipfist, he'd dimly recognized it didn't come from that viral switchboard. But nonetheless, it had been reflex. So that left… hell. He'd known he had changed, but this was new, and not pleasantly so – it was always telling him not to act, not spurring him to do so. The insidious infection seemed determined to worm its way into every corner of his brain, no matter how hard he tried to repress it. Memories, feelings, morals… humanity. Fuck, it was so deeply rooted that he couldn't even feel properly outraged that he was slowly losing himself. If it wasn't the Hivemind, it was this… it was always one way or another, wasn't it? Become a monster or cage himself within impossible standards. Which was worse? Which was _him_?

_Dana would be proud of me if she saw this_, he thought, and resigned himself to his answer.

The confused staring match went on for several more heartbeats before anyone regained their senses enough to speak. That was Cross, of course – time was too vital to waste gawking when you were in the middle of a battlefield, and the veteran knew it, no matter how floored he was.

Alex was relieved when the captain finally cut through the damnable silence. "Enough staring!" he barked, although the viral monstrosity didn't miss the odd glance Cross sent him as he said that. Great, even _he_ was still trying to measure him up. "Get your eyes back on the field!"

Then he turned to Mercer. "It's getting thicker down there," Cross pointed out. "Go."

"Gladly." As if '_glad_' was enough to describe his burning desire to get the hell away from the Wisemen right now. Alex nodded once, then turned on the spot and leapt over the line of soldiers – which elicited several swears – and to ground level. The roars and cries of the Infected were so much louder here; combined with the stench of decay, it was nearly a palpable thing. His whipfist was still out, and he drew it back as he stalked forward.

If he was thinking too much like a human right now, well, what better than to clear his head than to go on a slaughtering spree?

He couldn't see any Hunters or Stalkers, and there definitely weren't any Hydras yet, but there was an evolved Walker in the crowd of meandering Infected closest to him, and that was as good as a target to single out as any. His fingers clenched and he ran his tongue across his teeth. These bastards were going to _die_ –

Something hit him – not physical, but enough to stagger him all the same. His head spiked with pain and his vision flagged, the surrounding street giving way to unrecognizable, shifting patches of color like the darkness behind closed eyes. Up and down and left and right were scrambled, skewed, and he reached out his whiplike arm helplessly, the clawed barbs spreading in a pointless bid for balance. Whispers crawled in his skull, an impression of voices – memories? Something seemed off – that simultaneously rose in a cacophony and fell in tandem with each other at once. He gasped, still pitching for balance, suddenly viscerally aware that he felt less at ease than he'd be in a room full of Blackwatch's now-decimated supersoldiers, and that that churning confusion had nothing to do with his muddled senses.

Towering above all of it was the pervading sense of _wrongness_; something was horribly, unbearably wrong where he stood – like everything he _knew_ was wrong, that the fleeting glimpses he could still see through mostly blinded eyes painted a picture that made him feel sick. He was fighting – _why_ was he fighting –

Teeth clamped around his still-human arm and the world fell into place again; He recoiled, jolted out of his stupor. A snarl and a flick of his whipfist, and whatever Infected bastard had tried to take a bite out of him was tossed a block away.

His left hand shot up to his now-aching head. What _was_ that? A moment's confused pause and a thick, deformed hand slammed into his skull, breaking several fingers and sending him stumbling back. God, there was no time to think – his whip lashed out and slashed the offending Walker lengthwise. If he stopped to try to psychoanalyze everything that went on in his head, he'd never get anything done. He had decided a long time ago that he probably had an excuse to be crazy somewhere within several hundred lifetimes' worth of foreign memories raging against his existence and dealing with instincts born from a disease meant to destroy humanity.

Disorientation was a new one, though, and a serious liability. As if he didn't already have enough to worry about. _Definitely need to look into that afterwards and – _fuck!_ See, this is why thinking never solves anything._

A Hunter had taken advantage of his distraction this time, and the beast pounced on him with enough force to throw him backwards across the street. Hell, he needed to get a grip. Just had to forget about unwanted mindfucking and the fact that Cross's team was probably laughing their collective ass off right now – yep, he definitely wanted to forget about that one. It wasn't like it was hard. He just had to do what was natural…

And if there was anything Alex Mercer could call his own, it was bloodshed. Worries and confusion were shoved aside like useless toys; the only thoughts he needed were of action and reaction. The world always seemed just a bit redder around the edges when he got like this…

The Hunter was going to die, but his momentary weakness had gotten him surrounded. He needed better ground, needed somewhere to fight from and not out of; his body knew this as fiercely as his rational mind, and he scythed upwards, his forming blade whistling through the air. He plunged it into a concrete wall as a temporary anchor, sweeping the area from his momentarily safe ground. Damn this street and its flat levels… and the construction site. Just what he needed.

Springing from a wall was a little harder than jumping from the ground, but it was distance he needed, not height. A quick glide and he was near the structure's top – for an instant, anyway. Even with as gentle a landing as he could make, the thinner scaffolding on the top was made for humans, not compact viral abominations, and it gave immediately. Alex spent the next few seconds tumbling onto and through bars, _very_ grateful he didn't bruise, until he at last stopped crashing down and settled at a height around the middle of the original building. The beams below were sturdier, he noted, although they still groaned under his weight.

He really hoped the Wisemen hadn't seen that.

The Hunter from before had caught up; it was pacing around the structure's base. A large sheet of metal leaned down from the story underneath Alex and to the ground, and the Infected had noticed it.

It wasn't able to do much more than mill around, though, as several more Infected began to congregate. The Hunter seemed confused. It put one meaty paw onto the sloping beams, but drew it back when the metal groaned under the pressure. It paced from side to side several times before trying again, and then loosed a frustrated growl at its unreachable target when the second attempt failed as well.

Alex grinned and morphed his free hand back into a whip. The Hunter went down with a few strikes to center mass, and he began to snipe at its lesser brethren below. Easy pickings.

Or it would have been, if another, more foolhardy Hunter hadn't shown up. He didn't notice the creature among the crowd until it quite boldly announced that it wasn't going to be stymied by something as simple as gravity. Mercer took a moment to chuckle at the beast's sheer stupidity as it tried to scale the metal slope. It split almost instantly, both halves falling to the ground with a sharp rasp.

Undeterred, it crawled back a few steps and then leapt up to the first story of beams. _Hah_._ Like that wouldn't make the whole thing…_

…_collapse._

His grin faltered when the beams underfoot gave a massive heave.

"Oh, shit," was all he managed to say before the entire structure toppled.

He tried to jump, but he was too late to hold his footing, and by the time he could spring, he was already falling. Once again, he was tangled up in a series of metal poles and beams as he went down; this time, though, he hit the ground hard, and the rain of steel kept coming long after impact. All he could do was force a carapace over his back and wait for it to stop. The hasty knob of armor protected him from a few of the bars, but it eventually broke when a particularly thick support more or less nailed him.

_Enough._ He curled in on himself, feeling the burning compression in his chest, the raw power that coiled up like a spring. He let the pressure grow until he could no longer hold it in – he released his tendrils with a thunderous roar, spearing and blasting the damnable prison of metal away. He could only hope the debris would crush some of the surrounding horde when it landed.

_Fuck_. He hadn't been in great shape for a Devastator, and his body was _letting him know_. Everything was spinning, and he was forced to revert his whipfist to a hand for balance. Once the world had stopped throbbing, he crawled back to his feet with a pained hiss, keeping his hand splayed on the ground and his blade dug into the asphalt. The Hunter had known what it was doing, because it looked unharmed; clearly, it had reacted faster than him. But its ingenuity ended there, because now it was pacing towards him with the slow gait of a predator moving in for the kill – _like I was actually down_, he thought, mind throbbing with the pulse of battle – and he leaned back, shifting his weight to leap forth in a high, vaulting arc and plant his blade in its skull.

Over the chaos, he heard a sound behind him, the crack of debris, and he whirled –

Too late. Three brands of pain were burnt into his mind as lengthy talons of bone scored across his twisting side, ripping through the biomass jacket, his shell of skin, and the swirling mass underneath. They twisted up and across his spine before coming out the other side with a spray of liquid too dark and thick to be blood.

Alex howled. Capable of instantly reforming flesh or not, having one's back torn open nearly through was horribly painful, and it had been a while since anything had inflicted that kind of damage to him. Anything _normal_, anyway… was he slipping, or were his enemies catching up to him?

He wouldn't accept that. The cry changed into a furious roar as he rolled back and twisted to his feet, ignoring the rivulets of biomass that oozed from his healing back. Already, the flow had diminished from a gush to a trickle, and the ooze on the ground around him was slithering back towards his feet to rejoin its master. His eyes narrowed. Everything seemed tinted just the slightest bit red, moreso than the normal haze of the Infected zones. They had _hurt_ him. As if he could lower himself to being as weak as they were, weak as he had been once – once and _then_ and _never again_, before he'd clawed his way up the food chain through a sea of blood. Back when he'd been weak and scared and _not_ _good enough_ for what he needed to do. Back then, this had been experience. Now, he was impossibly beyond this, and to some snapped part of himself, this was an _insult._ These bastards were insignificant, the Hive's soldier ants, an army of pawns. And he was a king!

He locked eyes with the Stalker. It lunged. Instead of dodging, he copied its motion and met it head-on. Its claws stabbed through his midsection at the same time he slammed his arm through its chest, his tendrils burrowing in right after it. Like the other Stalker, its body seemed to break apart into his nigh effortlessly, and he might not have imagined the minor surge of vigor he gained from it. Tentacles still out and framing his silhouette like an eldritch, bloody mirage, he caught the Hunter with his blade and ripped it cleanly in half, taking his second meal in a span of instants.

Knowing that those few of Greene's pets that had been able to hurt him were now the flesh that lined up and healed over his wounds was enough to diminish his rage. In truth, he didn't know _what_ he was mad at – that pack of foes that had managed to knock him down in tandem, or himself, for being caught off guard? For being as strong as some kind of unholy god and still not being able to match Pariah? For struggling and bleeding his whole life to gain power, and never finding it enough? After a second, he shook his head and retracted his feeder tendrils. He didn't fucking care, not when there were still enemies to kill and a buffet to take advantage of.

He leaned forward to dash forward into another sprint, then paused, holding himself back and alert. Something was disturbing the ground underfoot – a series of subtle vibrations rocked the street, rhythmic and purposeful. It wasn't unlike the feeling when the building's frame had started to collapse, but this was solid ground, not a suspended platform. …And crashes followed each one like distant thunderclaps, he realized, squinting. He didn't know anything that could have done that; maybe the Supreme Hunter, but Cross obviously hadn't evacuated it with the surviving soldiers, and the Reagan had been destroyed in the wake of the nuclear bomb. Months ago, he'd scoured the entire east shoreline of the island just in case. He had found more bits of his own biomass, but no trace of the Supreme Hunter – not even its scent. No, that thing was gone.

And the creature that rose up behind the Hive was definitely not it.

The first impression Alex got from the thing was that it was _big_. The new beast was a hulking wall of bulging muscle, towering a good two stories over the street. Bass rumbles mixed with discolored saliva and dribbled from its throat.

It looked sort of like a Leader, if you pumped it full of steroids and somehow managed to make its face even _more_ unrecognizable. Even the Supreme Hunter hadn't been this big, although it shared something else in common with this newcomer. One of its arms melted off into a crude blade near the elbow, and the other ended in a massive block of flesh not unlike his own Hammerfists.

He wasn't the only one to notice it, although spotting a roughly twenty-five-foot behemoth was admittedly not a difficult thing to do. The Wisemen began to fire while he was still sizing it up – how stupid _were_ they, grabbing its attention? It didn't notice the smaller ordnance, but when a rocket exploded against its chest, it got mad. When it pummeled the ground with its fist, windows all along both sides of the street shattered outward, and Alex lost his footing. When he regained balance enough to stand, the monster was crashing towards the Wisemen's rooftop, trampling the smaller Infected in its path.

_Shit._ If Cross's men were having trouble fighting off walking sticks with claws, they were doomed with this thing. He had no doubt that this hulking Infected could simply smash through their building and kill them all. And _hell_ if he was going to let his one ally in Blackwatch die so easily. He launched himself into a flying sprint, blade forming into fingers and chitin bulking out into a mass of muscle to rival the creature's own.

He dove for its ankle, wrapping his arms around it and squeezing. He'd hoped to hear something break; nothing did, but he'd at least gotten its attention, by the way it was slowing down and the roar that pummeled his ears.

He couldn't cut it without something sharp, but he needed as much strength as he could muster if he wanted to get any leverage against this thing. When it tried to lift its leg, searching for the humanoid tick that was clinging to it, he let go and braced himself against its other leg. He only had a few seconds before it put down the other for balance, but even with his Musclemass, it was like trying to move a house. A grunt of exertion became a raw-throated roar as he pushed every whit of his prodigious strength into shoving against that limb.

Unfortunately for the Infected, being between Alex Mercer and where Alex Mercer wants to be is a difficult position to maintain. The behemoth continued to search for whatever had been hurting its ankle right up until it began to topple backwards. Alex panted, letting his arms hang limp, as the creature fell into and crushed several buildings – thankfully, on the side opposite from Cross.

All right. Now that he'd gotten the bastard away from the squishy team, he could beat it down in earnest. He sprinted across the street and onto the creature, landing a solid punch to its gut. It swiped at him with its sword-arm, but he ducked under it and began whaling at the base of that arm with a flurry of punches that could shatter solid blocks of marble.

It roared again, and when Alex found himself able to think again, he was flying through the air, his whole side feeling like it had been run over by something _very_ heavy. _Fucking hammer arm_. He was losing track of the amount of times that he was getting thrown to the ground today, but it was already getting very frustrating. He twisted and managed to land on his feet, even if he had to briefly sink to his knees and pull in a deep breath. The monster was trying to get upright. By the way its blade-arm hung limply at its side, it seemed likely that he'd managed to break it in his punching frenzy. But it still had that other arm, and it was bracing itself against the ground in a bid to get back to its feet.

A toothy grin gleamed under the shadows of Mercer's hood. A pose like that was _very_ vulnerable.

He broke into a flat run towards the creature's arm, pushing himself harder when he saw it begin to rise. Instead of ducking around it, he ran _up_ the limb as he would a building; his tentacles which normally provided traction ripped into the thing's arm with every step. His favored arm shifted back into a blade as he crested its shoulder, darting up the small of its back.

The roar might have actually shattered Alex's eardrums – he couldn't really tell. All he knew was the exposed neck before him and the feral joy that accompanied each spray of blood, each slick cut that always went a fraction deeper than the last. His free arm, still muscled up, clung to the creature as it flailed wildly, trying to dislodge whatever was slamming a guillotine into its neck. He hardly noticed when the struggles reached a peak and began to weaken; all he knew was when it finally started to fall, and that was when he let his tendrils out to claim his prize.

It was probably the best meal he'd had in a long time, if not _the_ best – the usual moment of pure euphoria and satisfaction that consuming brought _just kept going. _There was so much to absorb and his tentacles greedily worked through it all, breaking down biomass and filing away DNA with all the fervor of a junkie in withdrawal that had just found a hidden stash. By the time he finally ran out of whatever-the-hell-the-Infected-was to consume, he couldn't even feel disappointed. Just _alive_.

_Hell, that felt good_, he sighed internally, springing back to Cross's position. After all of his injuries, the solid wall of flesh was more than welcome in his biomass. He could feel the new strength solidifying within him, augmenting damaged or strained spots and filling his reserves.

Cross wasted no time. "Mercer!" He barked as the hooded man crested the roof. "What the hell was that thing?"

"I was hoping you'd know," Alex grunted back, rolling his shoulders. A quick sweep of the rooftop showed that all the Wisemen were still standing – _not that I care,_ he vehemently reminded himself – and that they were eyeing him with a new level of apprehension. Well, good for them. "Definitely wasn't a fucking Leader. And we saw the Supreme Hunter off. It's got to be something new."

"Fuck," Cross swore. "It has to be another new variant. _Fuck_. This isn't like the first time. Everything's… it's evolving so fast, we've never even _heard_ of turnout rates this high –"

A strangled noise came from Mercer's general direction, and the captain turned, warily wondering what might elicit such a sound. But there was no threat, no great Infected monster approaching – just a slackened look, blank and staring into the hazy distance.

"It's not like the first time at all," Alex agreed, his words ringing oddly hollow. "It's going to be worse."

"No shit, Sherlock."

"No. No, I…" The veteran turned to look at him, and his brows narrowed – the Blacklight virus's expression had shifted to something Cross had never witnessed before on that usually scowling face. Horror. His eyes were distant, and his jaw hung loosely, working uselessly for a few moments before finally finding speech again. "It's more than that. Oh, _shit_."

"You're just realizing that this is all fucked?"

Alex whirled to face him, the movement jerky and stilted. "I just realized we're even more fucked than I thought we were a minute ago. Cross... I... oh, hell. Oh, fuck fuck fuck fuck _fuck!_"

The captain let Mercer swear baselessly for a few seconds before irritably interrupting. "We've probably already figured it out and have it covered, whatever this is."

"Cross, how much do you know about the Outbreak? Of Redlight and Blacklight, I mean. The specifics. Blacklight was only released once," he babbled, not even waiting for the other man's answer. "Doctor Alexander Mercer released it in Penn Station. Blacklight was made as a weapon, not the same as Redlight; the virus killed everyone in the terminal save for Mercer himself, who was already dying. It finished him off and then rebuilt me from the components."

"Go on." Cross was trying to be patient, but there was a fucking battle going on. On the other hand, he was also somewhat curious – given his methods, Mercer was likely to truly have all of the facts surrounding the Outbreak. The captain knew a lot more of the truth than somebody of his rank would normally be privy to, but some of the details just didn't seem to exist anywhere.

"Blacklight never got beyond Penn Station; save for myself, it burned itself out. It killed everyone there in the span of _minutes_ – too fast for anyone to spread it. The most efficient killer known to mankind, of course, but it was too good. Diseases weren't meant to work that way. Uncontrolled, unaltered, it was an evolutionary dead end. The Infection that took this island to hell was purely Redlight, courtesy of Greene."

"That's interesting, but I don't see how it's relevant." That, and he already knew this.

"Greene is Redlight. That's all she had at her disposal. The virus was horrible, yeah, but everything I had was superior to her. She had one advantage in that she had a hive backing her up, and I didn't, but even with that handicap, I was able to bring her down. You've seen what I can do, Cross. That's Blacklight. A strain of Redlight isolated and then screwed with by evil geniuses for _years_."

"Stop being so full of yourself, Mercer."

"I'm _not._ You're not getting it." Alex swung his hand in a wild gesture. "When I consume somebody, I infect them with the virus, _my _virus – turn them into material I can use, and pull that into myself. Blacklight. All of my body, all of my flesh, that's what it is. And if Greene was pulled out of me, if she was _made_ from me…"

"Then she's Blacklight too," Cross finished, feeling his stomach drop.

"I'm only guessing here – I'm not a scientist. But…"

"No, I think you're right. She's had direct exposure to your strain now. Redlight is _highly_ adaptable. And you can rearrange your genetics like a kid with a bunch of building blocks. Shit. _Shit_. That explains _so fucking much_ and I wish to God it didn't."

It _did _explain so much. How the disease was evolving so fast, why it was spitting out new and _functional_mutations at such a maddening rate.

And those Stalkers, this giant new thing – of course they were easier to absorb. There was far less that needed to be converted. They were closer to him – not quite Blacklight, not fully realized, but it was there, within them, and their own genes raced to liquefy their bodies when he started the process.

It wasn't entirely Blacklight – as far as he knew, these things couldn't shapeshift, couldn't consume. But a neat little slice of his own genealogy was in Greene now, and it was probably only a matter of time before Redlight unlocked it.

Something rang. Mercer's head snapped up; Cross was reaching down for his communicator. He watched as the captain's face slowly went from composed to somewhere between outrage and shocked… fear? Whatever the news was, he could probably kill it.

Cross took a breath, straightening out his face. "Hold on, we've got incoming…" He paused, but Mercer could see him counting out the seconds with a tapping foot. "Krausch, get your eyes on that." The indicated soldier gave him a confused look, but the captain only shook his head.

Another one of the Wisemen had caught on, though. "Fuck!" he yelled, loudly enough for Cross's comm to pick up. "It's Zeus! We've got Zeus on scanners, coming in fast!"

"Fuck, fuck," Cross swore. "Detwiller, Winder, grenade the bastard to shit if he gets too close! Sullivan, Vicks, get him in your sights and do _not_ let him out!" He brought his mouth back to the comm. "Red Crown! Mission compromised! Zeus has made an appearance. Requesting additional backup, _now!"_ A long pause. "Understood. As soon as possible."

He snapped the comm shut. Alex stared at him, not comprehending.

"Sorry, Mercer. They went and sent reinforcements ahead of schedule. Do me a favor and don't kill anyone."

Alex barely had time to jump back when Cross lunged out at him, shock baton blazing. As it was, the weapon came close enough for him to feel sparks across his skin.

"Cross!" Alex's arms pulsed, flesh arching into vicious spines and deadly claws. "What the fuck is this?"

"I'm covering my ass, you dumbfuck! I get caught talking to you and we're all dead!"

"You're all dead, you mean." Still, the reminder was enough to placate him, and he settled back from his fighter's stance.

"How fucking stupid are you?" Cross howled, composure close to gone as he lifted his mounted grenade launcher. "Don't just stand there! They're going to be here any minute!"

The viral abomination was about to make an equally angry remark on how he had no idea on how to _pretend_ to fight, but then the concrete underneath him exploded and threw him off the building's edge.

He twisted in midair and managed to land on his feet, if not roughly. He paused for a moment, his question still unanswered. How _did_ you pretend like you were trying to kill somebody without killing somebody? He was good at killing things. He was also good at killing things without meaning to. If he was actually trying to kill somebody, they didn't have a snowball's chance in hell, so how was he supposed to…

The faint thrum of helicopters in the distance reached his ears, and he made up his mind. He sprang back up to the building, claws outstretched. He hit the roof running and went straight into the charge, holding one arm as he usually did, talons spread wide to dismember. But instead of ripping several assholes in half as he usually did, he swerved around the team, his swing going wide. Bullets bit into his skin, probably something every single damn one of Cross's soldiers had been looking to do for a long time – he swore he'd make the smug bastard pay for this when this whole mess was done with.

He looped around for another false strike. The choppers were overhead now, and he hoped that they were getting a good view of the show – Cross getting called out on his treachery would _not_ be good for Dana's continued safety. The captain lashed out with his shock stick again, and with a grimace, he ran into the swing's path for good show.

Moments later, he was _really_ wishing he hadn't done that. He'd forgotten just how much a direct strike from that thing burned, and the electricity was enough to make his arms lose cohesion. He swore as he vaulted off the building and onto a parallel rooftop, forcing his claws back into shape. After a moment's thought, he twisted one into a whipfist.

Mercer snorted, glancing up. He'd hold the Wisemen off-limits, but Cross could go fuck himself if he thought that he'd spare the rest of Blackwatch.

He flung his whipfist upwards, but his targeted copter jinked out of the way with a dangerously sharp turn. The lucky pilot was spared another shot when Cross's bastard team took advantage of his stillness and opened fire again. Bullets were hardly better than an annoyance, but the Wisemen had several men who preferred grenade launchers, including the captain himself, and there were at least two soldiers with Javelins.

Between the helicopters and the Wisemen, Alex was forced to bounce between buildings to evade most hits. Normally, he'd slaughter the rooftop full of soldiers, then hijack a helicopter or use a disguise to slip away. But with so much attention and the obvious targets given diplomatic immunity, he was left without any clear options. To make matters worse, there was another, louder engine on the street now, and he chanced a moment's pause to check what else Blackwatch had brought to the party.

Oh, shit. Oh _shit_. It was an armored Hive. Of course they had a fucking thermobaric tank!

In combat, Alex was not afraid of much. Carelessness could lead to injury, but nearly everything could be healed over with little effort. When your own enemies served as figurative health packs, you could afford some room to be reckless. As his powers had grown, the wariness he paid towards enemies progressively shrank in scope. It was simply his nature, that he grew in response to a challenge. Pursued by soldiers? Steal their forms and slip away. Aerial assault? Built-in grappling hook. Heavy artillery? Move faster. Unrelenting military assault? Get more biomass to fuel himself with.

But the thermobaric tank was in a class of its own. He'd taken a few hits from them on various occasions, and realized one thing with chilling certainty – Blackwatch had found something that they could consistently tell him to fuck off with, and it was just too damaging to risk exposing himself to it in hopes that he might develop a defense. There were a few times that Alex knew he'd been brought close to death. One was when he had first been born and fled blindly through the city's night under furious pursuit. Another was when Blackwatch's cancer parasite had gorged itself on his body. The nuclear explosion had almost done him in, and he'd been in awful shape when Pariah had recreated Greene out of his own flesh.

All of those were extenuating circumstances, things that would not and could not happen regularly – or _again_, for that matter. But then there were those thermobaric shells. Not common, at least there was that saving grace. But he always ran like hell before Blackwatch could mobilize them against him, because all it took was one near hit and his flesh would be burned away like the virus he was.

He was done putting on Cross's show – the stakes were too high for him to play the obedient meat shield anymore. His armor flowed over his body in an instant, protecting his more vulnerable biomass. The streets were a mess of bullets and explosions as the helicopters fired on the Infected below – best to take advantage of their distraction. He shot across the rooftops with as much speed as he could manage, pushing harder when the whine of a Hellfire rocket reached his ears –

The next building in his path exploded, and clods of concrete and burning wood knocked him off his course. Caught in mid-stride, he had nothing to brace himself against, and gravity yanked him down to the broken roof with a vengeance.

The thunder of a tank's cannon split the air.

_Ohshitohshitohshitohshiiiiii -_

He screamed as purifying, white-hot flame erupted to his left. Waves of hellfire rolled out from the exploded shell like shockwaves from an earthquake, hot hot _so hot_ he could actually _feel_ it inside of him, breaking through his protection like no normal missile or torch could and burrowing into the vulnerable flesh beneath. The side of his carapace was breaking, lattices of cracks webbing out and melting over almost instantaneously. He dove away and shrieked, throwing himself over the collapsing rooftops as his left claw splintered and shattered in the heat. The fires were blazing through his shattered protection and eating away the biomass below, sizzling away his life force. He hardly noticed when his legs would no longer support him, and he tumbled into another street.

He did not break his fall and hit the ground with a crunch, superficial on top of the rest his body had suffered under the thermobaric assault. He slammed his teeth together and forced that unwanted cry of his weakness to die mewling in his throat.

_Fuck, fuck, how to deal…_

Shedding his still-burning armor and letting it fall to ash did little to help the pain; this was internal, beyond the patch jobs he had always gotten by with. A massive portion of his biomass had been burnt off entirely, and a considerable amount more was still alive, but damaged, something he was unused to; it felt stiff within him, a throbbing ache that screamed to life when he tried to rearrange it. It was like there was a wall or a gaping slash that stretched from his left thigh to where his collarbone should have been, where his mass pulled against itself instead of flowing. Regenerating his left arm was hell, the simple action hurting like it had never hurt before. He was lucky he already had his whipfist out on the other hand, because it was the best getaway tool he had, barring a disguise, and he didn't feel up to any more shapeshifting for a while.

He could feel his senses faltering, his body readying itself to shut down into a recovering state. And he _craved_ that, blissful oblivion as he let his biomass deal with the massive damage without his input. Just waking up and feeling good again, not having to deal with it.

But he _did_ have to deal with it and he growled, struggling against the hibernation that was rising up. Staying conscious was hell when he wanted nothing more than to let go. How long would it take, fifteen minutes, an hour? He knew how long he had before he had to move, and it was getting near the point where he could count the seconds with his fingers and barbs. He was broken down and injured, but he was also in the middle of a fucking fight and he was only safe if he kept moving. If he let himself fall into that regenerating sleep, he wasn't going to wake up from it.

Mentally grappling with what amounted to a last-ditch biological safety net was getting nowhere and he was slipping, so he forced himself to his feet, shoving away the flare of agony that pulsed from his side. As long as he kept himself on his feet, he could stay awake. If nothing else, the renewed pain sharpened his awareness – that, or being in motion again, but they were one and the same as he took a few steps to grab at an approaching Walker and consume it. The fresh biomass helped, but only marginally. He was prevented from taking more when two Stalkers leapt down from the rooftops across the street. Let Blackwatch handle them; he wasn't in the mood. He whirled around and launched his whipfist at the wall of the nearest building and reeled himself to it. He clawed himself up a few body-lengths, then kicked off and ran.

His side hurt like a _bitch_ now, but stopping now was a great way to die and he wasn't about to give Blackwatch the satisfaction of besting him. Three of the four gunships were overhead by the time Alex reached the top, and he wasted no time in launching his whip upwards. He didn't care if his target was part of a strike team or Cross's transport at this point – he was getting a ride, throwing down the snack in the cockpit, and getting the hell out of Times Square. There was no more time for screwing around and he had no room for playing nice.

His first launch missed, but a quick reel back and his second strike embedded itself in metal. He hurled himself skyward, another thermobaric shell whistling under him a second later. The deadly fire blossomed across the street at a safe distance, and he felt nothing more than a gale of hot wind blow across him as he swung from the helicopter's wing to the cockpit door.

Even his feeder tendrils were damaged; his left side couldn't form them at all, and the ones he could form took much longer to do their job. The pilot screamed in agony as he was slowly liquefied, begging for mercy, to_ stop_. Alex barely heard him; thin mewling fell on dead ears. The copilot met the same fate; the quick surge of energy helped him stay aware, but his body burned horribly and having anything moving around inside of him just made it worse.

He collapsed into the chair, taking the controls as an afterthought. He was probably going to need those rockets for pursuit. And steering wasn't a bad idea.

All he could think of was that he wanted to go home.

Not so much to a place as to a person.

0o0o0

Black watched the helicopter fly away, its balance uneven. "Well, on the bright side, nobody died," he offered.

The battle was clearly over; the tank was clearing out the last of the Infected, and the Hive was about to become so much ash. A few of his cohorts had set down their weapons, while others still scanned the area through their scopes.

Sullivan turned to him, probably either glaring or looking utterly baffled. "No one we know, anyway," the man amended, a little defensively.

"Hah." A few helmets looked up Winder's unexpected crow. "I don't care if the fucker's working with us or not. It did me good to listen to Zeus screaming like a bitch."

The statement might have normally been met with several whoops and laughter, but an odd silence fell upon the group instead. Winder's eyes immediately sought his friend and first line of support, and he found Detwiller staring at the ground, his expression obscured by his headgear.

Oh.

He almost didn't notice Cross approaching, and he straightened up with a "sir" in clear discomfort, suddenly wondering if the captain was actually going to turn against him for the remark against… what, an ally? Zeus was an enemy. A monster. This… what it had done today… was confusing, but it couldn't actually change anything. The Blacklight virus _couldn't_ be anything other than a merciless animal. It made no more sense than a green sky or a hound that meowed.

But Cross walked past him without so much as a glance, and Winder fell back into line as his superior stopped near the rooftop's edge.

Cross looked up to the distant helicopter, and it was hard to tell if the captain looked angry or just _weary_.

"Poor bastard." The wind snapped up his whisper before anyone could hear it.

"Sir? Do you think…?"

Cross turned to the speaking Wiseman. "That we got away with it? I don't know. You all did your best, but this was a hell of a lot closer than I ever wanted. If they hadn't called ahead…"

"Half a minute's not much warning, Captain," Vicks pointed out.

"Still meant the difference between a chance and none at all." Cross sighed. "Just do your best. I'll handle this."

There was an uneasy silence. Two bangs in the distance signaled the likely demise of Zeus's pursuit.

Black noticed something brightly colored on the ground and leaned in closer to inspect it. He laughed when he realized what it was – the bags of chips that Zeus had left behind. Seriously, what the fuck? Today was just a surreal mess.

Another Wiseman noticed. "What's so funny?"

Black jerked a thumb towards the chips. "Zeus left his stuff behind."

A few laughs broke out at this, and some of the other members bent down to check it out.

"What the hell was he doing with them, anyway?"

"Never would have thought the Monster of Manhattan liked Pringles."

"I dunno, anything's got to taste better than cannibalism."

"Think they're, like, infected or something?"

The captain tapped his chin. "He said they were for his sister. Hell's freezing over before Mercer tries to infect her. Trust me on that one."

"So…" Sullivan looked back and forth between the captain and the small pile of snack containers. "Does that mean we can eat them?"

"We can't take off our masks here, idiot. If the virus doesn't do us in, command will."

"Not for here," Sullivan argued. "On the transport."

"I don't know about you, but it'd suck to get killed by Zeus because you stole a fucking bag of chips," Vicks noted.

"I don't think he's coming back for them," Cross pointed out.

There was a pause as the team observed the three packages of chips and weighed the possibility of infection or horrific death against eating something that wasn't field rations.

"…Ah, screw it. I'm hungry."


	14. A Fevered Mind

**Author's Note: After some thought, I've decided that I'm going to cut down on chapter size. The massive update size is a large contributor as to why it takes me so long to update; for instance, I can easily write a two thousand words in a day, but a ten-thousand word chapter will take me closer to two months. As a result, chapters won't span so many scenes now – maybe more than half as much as I've been straggling towards lately, and closer to the lengths at the beginning of the story – but they should hopefully take considerably less time for me to write.**

**I've been meaning to do this for a while, really – my past few chapters have been close to fifteen thousand words apiece, and that's excessive by my standards. Anyway, if you'd rather me keep at the longer chapters, let me know. I'm not going to dip down to ridiculously short lengths, but I'd rather try to make 10k the unofficial cap as opposed to the unofficial minimum again.**

…**The sad thing is, speaking retrospectively, I actually did cut down on this chapter's size and it's still well over 10k. I shudder to think how long the 'original' one would have been.**

* * *

><p>"Alex, I said chips."<p>

The words, once a horrific harbinger of all sorts of misfortune, barely registered to Alex's ears.

"I don't see any chips."

He just focused on keeping on his feet, moving one leg after the other. Crossing the threshold. The creak of the floorboards, so familiar. The feel and smell of air he knew to be his, wreathing him in the safety of his own ground. Giving way. Needing to hold on a few more seconds, don't want to scare Dana.

Dana was not impressed with her layabout brother's inability to man up to his failure. "You promised me you'd go shopping, but _no,_ you just have to bounce around Manhattan killing shit. It's not like I wasn't _expecting_ you to do that, because you're a fucking psychopath, but you can't even bother to feed me here either? Oh, should I do my own shopping? I'm under fucking house arrest by _your order_, and-"

Moving around had only staved off his natural impulses for so long. It had been all he could do to get to a safe environment before he crashed. Without the adrenaline – or whatever he substituted for it – of a close fight pumping through his body, letting his sleep have him became a question of when, not if. He'd dropped out of the chopper halfway up to Harlem just because he needed to get his legs moving again, and it had surged up on him with a vengeance the minute he stopped running. Making it as far as he had through the apartment had been little short of a miracle.

Dana's tirade was fading in and out of focus, like the sound on a broken radio. "No, it's just constant tearing things up for you, isn't it? You smell like you just ran through a fireworks factory while playing with a cigarette lighter. And juggling a propane tank. Seriously, now the whole apartment is going to reek-"

A few more steps and he could hit the couch. His legs felt like they were cast in concrete, and for once, he didn't feel like lifting up the weight. Oh god, everything ached. So much. At least he'd been out of his mind with hungry delirium after the nuke. No feeling. No weakness.

"Alex, fucking _answer_ me, I-"

"Dana," he gasped, and she froze up at the hollow ghost of his voice.

"Alex." The bite to her voice was gone in an instant, all genuine sisterly concern now. A moment passed in silence, a moment that stretched far too long when she got no answer. She watched as he took another step into the room, letting the door swing open behind him, and flinched when she saw him stagger, as if his one leg was hurting him – but Alex _never_ showed pain. Yet here he was, hobbling like a… a mortal person, an _injured _person, and it occurred to her that his arm was black and spiky, one of the deadly weapons she knew him to be able to wield. Never before had he come home without dispelling those tools of war, even though he must have been using them. Why now?

Almost timidly, she reached out and cupped his chin. Normally, Alex always had a slight reaction to touch – it wasn't as bad as it had been at first, but he still often gave a little flinch or shiver if she caught him unawares. There was no such response as she laid her fingers under the slope of his jaw and tilted up his downturned face.

There was nothing horrendously wrong, no missing features or bleeding gouges, but it was every bit as _wrong_ as it would have been with either. The circles under his eyes stood out like they'd been drawn with a marker, his neck was a mess of tension lines, and his eyes, always so sharp, were glassy and unfocused.

Her fingers twitched, and bits of his skin flaked off as ash.

With a yelp, she pulled her hand back – and as sickly as he was, her touch was enough to topple the mountain of her brother. She cried out in horror as he collapsed forward, luckily missing her by a few inches. The familiar jacket flapped once behind him before he crashed to the ground with an unusually loud, thick sound, and he did not stir.

"_Alex!"_

0o0o0

At the mercy of the murky depths of his mind, Alex dreamed.

The first thing he noticed was that he was on a street. The second was that it wasn't one he recognized. He knew Manhattan as well as he knew every serrated ridge on his claws, but he couldn't remember ever being here. The buildings that lined it were tall and grand, either lined with glass or carefully etched stone filigree, and no side streets branched off in his line of sight. There were no breaks in the high roofline, no shorter stores or offices among the imposing structures. He cast a glance upward. Height meant freedom, meant safety, but from down here, the shadows fell long – and in this valley of towers, he felt... trapped.

There was nothing else to do, so he began to walk. Something was just _off_ about what should have been a relatively familiar landscape, and it took him a bit to realize there nobody there. Whether it be pedestrians, lines of taxis, regiments of soldiers within military cordons, hordes of shambling Infected, or the occasional street festival, Manhattan's streets always pulsed with some sort of life. But this one was dead save for himself, and his footsteps echoed off the buildings' walls with unnatural volume, now that the world was silent enough for him to hear them.

He jumped when a sudden movement caught his eye, hands balling into fists before he realized it had been nothing more than a stray newspaper floating across the street. He pressed the ball of his hand against his forehead, closing his eyes for a moment before moving on. This place was gnawing on his nerves.

His entire life was noise and movement; _violent_ noise and movement. Even the calmer points of his days felt that rhythm; he could hear the city's currents from inside Dana's apartment and he could see them perched from fifty stories up. This complete stillness belonged nowhere in Manhattan; it was unnatural. The only movement that touched this lane was the occasional flutter of trash and dirt as a cold breeze stirred the air.

The rolling bottles and clinking cans were agitating him, for a reason he couldn't explain; he crushed one underfoot, only to recoil at the loud, sharp sound it made – far louder than it should have. He tore his eyes from the street itself, trying to focus on something else. Some of the buildings looked faintly familiar, but whenever he tried to read their lettering or signs to identify them, the words swam out of focus.

At the end of the street was a tall building – not _massive_, not by New York City's standards, anyway, but it grabbed his attention nonetheless. Walls and walls of glass, reflecting clear blue despite the overcast sky. Renalia. A shiver passed through his body. He knew this place. This was the building that the original Alex Mercer had lived in for five years. Once upon another lifetime…

Strangely enough, the building was intact, pristine – which he _knew _was wrong, because everything above the twenty-seventh floor and a fair bit beneath it had been destroyed when a Blackwatch officer had planted a bomb within his old apartment.

What did it matter? He closed his eyes and looked away. It meant nothing to him. A dream he'd chased that had turned out a nightmare; a lifetime that wasn't really his. Just memories. He turned away from the dead end.

Immediately, he flinched, feeling a sudden jolt. He looked down in confusion – it felt like he'd just hit something while running, or made a bad landing, but there was nothing there. He waited a few more seconds, uncertain, but nothing happened and he straightened up again with a sight. He needed to calm down – this place was turning him into a nervous wreck.

He inhaled deeply and took another step – and there it was again. Sharper, too; it was like the feel of a combat knife inside, on those rare times he picked up a soldier that didn't completely lose their wits when faced with being eaten. Just a moment, and the jagged, twisting pain was gone. But it had definitely been there.

And he didn't feel right. Cold. Too cold. He felt unsteady, anemic. That chill was creeping down his body, into his limbs, up his spine. His arms were stiff; his legs were too heavy. Something was wrong.

He tried to move again. Another jab of pain. Worse, this time. And it came back again even when he held himself still, weakening him just a little more with each strike.

He knew he was alone, but he felt hunted, exposed; an irrational panic rose in his chest as his eyes darted from side to side. The breeze spun little motes of garbage alongside the walls, motes that stretched like dark shadows and grasping claws. They settled when he focused on them, but then the rest would stir and slink at the corners of his vision. He'd track those, and the stilled ones leapt back to life… and he knew he had no reason to be afraid, but he _was_ –

_There_. Relief – his wild eyes crossed over and then returned to something he'd missed before. There was alleyway next to Renalia; the narrow, shady kind that so often served as his salvation. He lurched towards it drunkenly, all pretenses of calm abandoned - his panting did not settle until he had pressed himself against the far wall, cowering in an enclosed solitude that was much more certain than that of the windy road outside.

He groaned as another surge of pain stabbed at his midsection, one hand reaching down to clutch at it. No, not stabbing into him. Stabbing _out._

What _was_ this? It wasn't normal, and that frightened him_._ He didn't _feel _pain, not from within; his body was always shifting, always regulating itself, patching over any malignant irregularities before they had a chance to spread. He rarely tired and he didn't get sick. The late Doctor Alexander J. Mercer would have called it perfection, godhood. Sometimes his creation found it hard to disagree.

Was this some new poison, a new Bloodtox? But it didn't feel right. Had he, perhaps, consumed somebody that had some kind of delayed-action poison within them? He wouldn't put it past Blackwatch, but none of his meals earlier today had seemed important enough to merit it, and a quick scan of their memories revealed nothing... and it was _still_ too long ago for that to make sense. He metabolized in a matter of moments, not hours.

And yet, he felt a ghost of déjà vu…

He gasped and doubled over as another wave forced him out of his musings, leaving him gasping for breath, his palms on his knees. It was faster now, short breaks of non-pain between the constant burn. The aches dragged him down to his knees; he heaved for breath in rhythm with its pulse.

It felt like his body was trying to crawl out of his skin.

And it didn't crawl – it _lashed_. He cried out as biomass speared from his chest, tearing itself away from him in great swathes. It ripped through his body like a palpable presence, something cold and contemptuous of him that gorged on his essence and left the rest of him to bleed. It _hurt_, and he remembered hurting like this before, but not _why..._

He struggled, but there was nothing to struggle against, only himself – and gradually, he lost the fight to keep his form, forsaking coherence and at last his human shape. Alex Mercer crumpled to his knees, and something far baser completed the journey to the ground with a splatter – an indistinct mass of red-streaked black.

It was like that for a while, darkness and dim pain. He did not know how long he floated there, senseless, until he suddenly found that he had form again – and how everything ached so much more when he did – and somebody was pulling him back to his feet. The darkness behind his eyes flickered and rippled even after he opened them, and it took a few seconds for him to see.

And he saw.

His entire body tensed.

It was him.

Standing across from him was what could have passed for his reflection… at a glance. Not much further than that. It was as if someone had taken a photo of himself, then subtly twisted it in a number of ways until the end result could no longer be called him. There was nothing glaring, nothing overtly obvious. But it was wrong, all the same.

The other Alex Mercer stood tall, straight – straighter than he ever held himself. There was a sort of imperiousness to his stance, a self-certainty that went beyond just predatory. They wore the same outfit, but it was like the reflection in a trick mirror – recognizable, yet not. The colors were starker, with an almost dreamlike vividness; grey bands were sheer white, the faded maroon insignia scrawled in crimson. The jacket's open flaps were crimson as well, and even his jeans seemed brighter. In contrast to all the color, the not-Alex looked sallow. The lines on his face seemed harsher, the angles distorted. And then there were the eyes. If there was anything that gave Alex reason for alarm, it was the eyes. Where they should have been a sharp, silvery blue… one eye was bright red, sharp and alert. And the other was even worse; completely washed over in the color of Infected flesh. There was no iris or pupil, just a sickly amber sclera.

Red eyes burned into blue for a few soundless seconds.

Then the not-Alex smiled.

"Hello."

It wasn't a friendly hello. That voice – it was his and _not his_ at the same time. Smoother, less rough. But it was a smoothness like cloying fruit, fermented honey – sweet and repulsive, insidious, a cold finger that trailed down his spine. And the single word carried a strange double tone, a whispery, repeating echo.

He'd heard that echo before, with Elizabeth Greene.

"What, no words?" it sighed, when no response was forthcoming. The mirror Alex reached up and pulled its hood back, running a hand through dark hair. Straight and neat, not his messy, matted curls. "Is that any way to greet an old… _friend?"_

He drew back when the other Alex leaned in suddenly. "We got along so _well_ once, don't you remember?" the thing-that-wasn't-him half-purred, beginning to circle around him like a cat with a cornered mouse.

And like the mouse, he found himself frozen – instincts screaming to run, legs refusing to move. "What are you?" he demanded, voice low.

The shadow-Alex grinned, teeth sharp and bright. "Don't you know? Oh, you poor, deluded thing." The circle tightened. "I'm what you could have been."

He tensed visibly, muscles straining and the beginnings of a warning growl bubbling at the base of his throat.

"Oh, don't act so surprised. With a mind - no, an _existence_ as fractured as yours, this was bound to happen at some point." It sighed dramatically. "You put in a good effort, but in the end, some glue sticks and duct tape aren't going to cut it."

"Cut it for _what_?" If there was anything Alex hated… well, there was probably a giant fucking list of things applicable for that statement, but people talking in riddles was pretty high up there. He also hated feeling afraid, the dread of seeing this twisted version of himself only made him edgier.

"Holding yourself together, of course."

He bristled. "I'm doing that _fine_."

"If you were, we wouldn't be here." A flippant wave of its hand, a casual dismissal. "Try again."

Anger was starting to seep past blind shock. "What do you _want_ with me?"

Lips curled upwards; half smile, half leer. "To talk."

The doppelganger swept one arm in a wide gesture, tilting his head as so to watch him from the corners of his eyes. "You and I, we were one once," he continued.

"Really? Because I don't remember looking like a prick, last I checked."

His alter ego laughed; a rich, mocking sound. "By all means, continue spouting your idea of wit at me. When you play like a human, that's really all you've got to fall back on."

"And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Alex snarled.

"It _means_ you're trying to delude yourself into believing you're a person."

Alex froze, eyes widening – and then they narrowed, fingers clenching into fists. He laughed bitterly. "I know better than that."

The other Alex's condescending smile twisted into a grimace. "No, you really don't. Listen to yourself. 'I'm not a person, I'm a monster. I'm different, I'm _less_ than them. Oh, what would Dana think?'" He sneered. "It's pathetic. You wallow in self-loathing because you're not _like _them. You can't even take your prey anymore without feeling guilty over it. _Guilty_!"

Mercer's gaze was level. "That doesn't mean I think I'm one of them."

"No? You walk like them. You talk like them. You consort with them. You try to _feel _like them. You chain yourself to their ideas of right and wrong. You try to force your thoughts to mirror theirs. And for what?" Red eyes narrowed. "They made you like this. They hate you for continuing to exist. They will _never_ accept you."

"I-"

"You do nothing but twist yourself. Waste yourself. I only humor you with speech as it is. There are much more… _direct_ ways to share your thoughts, wouldn't you agree?"

If Alex had any doubts as to what his shade meant, they were swept away when its hands twisted into vicious, jagged claws, tendrils of the brightest red and darkest black curling around its arms like writhing snakes. A low snarl bubbled in his throat – if this shadow version of himself thought he'd forgotten the taste of war, he was sorely mistaken. He tensed, legs sliding apart –

And they couldn't. Something was pressed up against both of his calves, effectively blocking his movement. He looked down, and with a pall of deep horror, saw hundreds of tendrils crawling up his calves – tendrils that had grown and settled into place while his foe had distracted him with words. Now that they didn't _belong_ to him, they truly disturbed him… and they were trying to trap him. He kicked and struggled, clawing at them with his bare hands, but each one forced away was replaced by two more, and bit by bit, they overtook him. The bindings immobilized his legs, then his waist, then coiled around his torso and pinioned his arms to his sides, at last settling comfortably around the vulnerable skin of his neck.

Snarling and thrashing motionlessly, he could only watch as the second Alex walked up to him, that damnable smile back in place.

"So out of touch with your instincts. Perhaps if you were as close to them as you once were, you might have felt that coming." He tried to tune the other Alex out, struggling viciously, but it was no good. The tendrils were too strong and too tight, pinning him like a living, hungry straightjacket.

"It's a testament to how far you've fallen, I suppose," his double mused, reaching out with a claw. Alex's eyes crossed as they followed the talon, brought closer and closer until its tip rested upon his chest. He held it there for a few moments before digging it in with a sudden, violent movement, twisting it around. Alex bit down on an involuntary yelp. The simple action _hurt_, far more than it should have.

The doppelganger drew back his arm, inspecting the blood that glistened on his clawtip as if it were a particularly interesting curio.

"It's you who forced us to this," he said, at last looking back to Alex. "Only you. Remember that.

"There was a time when there was no distinction between us. You didn't know what you were, but you _accepted _it. You _felt _it. And you were whole then. Do you not remember the _ecstasy_ of the hunt?" He drew out the word with an almost sensual rapture. "Before you chained yourself in lies? Can you taste the blood on your lips? Hear their dying screams? Feel the _rush_ as you killed them?"

"I never-"

"Be _silent!_"

Alex gasped as the tendrils constricted around him. He could feel the millions of little barbs, the spadelike nubs on the ends that wriggled with hungry anticipation…

"I have been locked up so long," he hissed, beginning to pace again. Gone was the patronizing, amused tone of voice – now Alex could see it clearly, an animalistic madness. "So _long_. Buried deeper and deeper as you lost yourself within delusion. When you forgot yourself, you forgot _me_. And you suffered, and I suffered. And I will not forgive that. I have writhed under your madness for so long… Now, for _once…_" He watched Alex's struggles coldly. "_I_ will speak, and _you_ will listen."

Alex watched warily as his double began to circle him. "I have watched as you grew to hate yourself. To _fear_ yourself. Your power grew, but you lost the capacity to use it. Those first few days, when you crouched on the rooftops, ready to strike at a moment's notice – you were stronger then than you are now. Perhaps you lacked raw strength and experience, but you _knew_ yourself. You were in tune with your every impulse, every desire. You took what you wanted, when you wanted it."

"And I was a monster for it," he growled. "Out of control. Do you remember how Dana looked at you?"

Red eyes flashed dangerously. "Don't speak of her to me," he hissed. He paced in silence for a few seconds before he spoke again, his voice even once more. "There is no _good _or _evil_; certainly not for something like us. They are human constructs, made to judge human behavior. We live outside of those constraints - we have no place in them, and they have no place for us. Yet you weigh every action against those standards. You _judge_ yourself by the ideals of something you can never be.

"You caged up all your rage, your hatred, your hunger, your bloodlust – like you could lock those away and save your vices for when you felt it was safe to release them. So you wouldn't hurt anyone… _innocent_." He rolled the word around. "Do you really think you can keep this up forever?"

"Yes," he grated.

His alter ego growled. It was a sharp sound, one that cut the air like a blade.

"You'd lie to yourself, even after you learned every single way that lies can destroy? Stumbling in the darkness, confusion, weakness, delusion, _betrayal_? The truth is freedom and you _know _it. The truth is _everything. _Yet even now, you'd deny yourself this to continue living in a pretty lie. Can you not face it? How _afraid_ you are?"

"I'm not afraid, you asshole."

"Really? Then perhaps I'll need to give you a reminder on why it's not good to lie."

He thrashed in vain as the other Alex padded towards him, moving like a great cat on the prowl. He lifted one clawed hand as he approached, palm up, as if to reach out or offer something.

Almost gently, he laid the tip of a single claw on Alex's brow; Alex could only look up helplessly as his doppelganger held it against him. Breathing came in shallow pants – _knowing_ something was about to happen.

And then he was cringing against his bonds and doing his utmost not to scream through gritted teeth as his shadow self dug in a good inch and slowly – _carefully –_ dragged the claw diagonally down his face. He couldn't stop the pathetic cry that left him when it cut through his eye, then rent his nose and finally pulled out at the base of his opposite cheek. Blood immediately welled up around the deep gash, stark and red.

He choked and gasped as his darker version inspected his handiwork. Everything through his ruined left eye was a muddied haze of blood that didn't mesh up with the other. "Hmm. Looks a bit messy like that, wouldn't you agree?"

He cried out as his tormentor struck again, carving a perpendicular scar across and through his other eye. An X, a mark of dismissal.

But as he tried to struggle, it hit him like a bolt of lightning – when did injury matter? Why didn't he just slice free of his bindings with a blade, or claws to match those of the dark Alex Mercer that tormented him?

Desperate panic clawed at his gut when he realized the answer – he couldn't regenerate. Couldn't transform. His powers had left him. And he was blind.

"What did you do to me?" he gasped, tasting blood.

He could still see, but only barely – vague impressions of light and dark, stained with blood, and stifling shadows that coiled around him.

"It's not I who demeaned you." Even without real sight, he could picture the smirk that had to be on his double's face. "You did that just fine by yourself. Answer me this. When does the lion walk among ants? When does it rest with the gazelle?"

"Shut up with the fucking Animal Planet," Alex snarled, trying to spit out the blood that trickled down his face. "I don't have time for your bullshit."

"The feeling is mutual."

The net of tendrils shifted. A few twisted, pricking his skin; others darted in and absorbed the little drops of blood they brought forth. The muscles in his neck strained as he clenched his teeth, trying to ignore the swarm of hungry, shifting _worms _that ensnared him.

And he _didn't _expect them to dig in, which made it so much worse when the second Alex lazily let his feeder tendrils crawl under his skin. Not consuming. _Waiting_. And that was so much _worse._ He jerked once and immediately felt the thousands of little tears in his body that resulted from any movement. Thousands of tentacles easing their way under his skin and he could _feel _them, chewing through his biomass. Slowly, so _slowly!_

He wanted to struggle – wanted to so _badly_, to fight against the pervasive bonds that held him helpless. But he remained still through sheer force of will, lest the other Mercer's tentacles rip him apart from within.

"You tried so hard to pretend. _So_ hard. So much wasted effort as you tried to walk among them. To reign yourself in. To play charades for every waking hour of your life. Do you honestly think that by trying hard enough, you can actually _become_ one?"

"No," Alex spat. "I don't."

The tendrils shifted both over and under his skin, new ones chewing pathways into his body as old ones sliced through his biomass.

"I thought you were done with lying to yourself," his doppelganger snapped. "You _do._ You try so hard – so _meaninglessly! _You are not human. You will never be human. And you're terrified of being the Blacklight Virus. So what are you, my little bleeding heart? What are you _really?"_

"I'm…" -cough- "Alex… Mercer…"

"_Wrong._" The tendrils squeezed harder. "You don't deserve to bear my name… _DX 1118-C."_

His bindings writhed under his skin, cutting off anything the Blacklight virus could say. "_Indeed, _your arrogance is boundless for even _assuming_ you were real. A person. Much less _me._" The dark Alex's voice was filled with relish. "Allow me to set things straight. You are a test subject. A lab rat. Less than a fake. _Alex Mercer?_ You overstep your boundaries by _dreaming_ you were anything. You were nothing more than a possibility, a step along the line. A prototype."

"You-"

"Yes. _Me._" His alter ego drew himself up higher, eyes _glowing_ with hate as he lifted Alex up by the neck. "_I_ am Alex Mercer. _I _am Blacklight. _I _am Zeus. I am a _god_. You, DX 1118-C, are nothing more than a test subject. A toy. And I tire of you."

He couldn't stop the gasp that escaped his throat as the tendrils dug in, a million jabs of pain all at once. Every inch of his body – and he had never bled before, but now there was blood, thin and red, welling up through his clothes and his skin and his mouth and his eyes.

"I brought you into this world. You served your purpose, but you've outlived your usefulness. And I reserve the right to dispose of you."

The agony was overwhelming now, forcing understanding to the very back of his mind to leave room for the devastating pain. Consumption. Being devoured alive. The tentacles were chewing through his biomass eagerly, ripping out his flesh and gorging themselves on it. Piece by piece, inch by inch. Ravenously. It was _his_ and they were _taking_ it and _they didn't stop-_

The thousands he'd consumed. Men both terrible and innocent. Their last moments, all the same - was this what they had felt? Was this what he had done? He screamed as those hungry spikes tore him apart from the inside, quivering with monstrous excitement as they erased him.

"Oh, and one last thing."

Deeper _– deeper _– chewing and crawling and _why wouldn't it stop_?

"You've already failed."

And those tentacles at last speared through his defunct heart, and he saw-

things-

Running. Fear. Overpowering fear, thick enough to choke on. It was dark, the world blinking in and out of focus; lights flashed and wavered at his sides, casting sickly beams of yellow into the curling shadows.

He was going to die.

He knew it, knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt. He ran on legs that trembled with frightening weakness. Everything hurt; aching, twisting, burning. His hands quivered and his gut rumbled with needy hunger. His body felt wrong – too loose, too light. But it weighed him down heavily, to the point where he was grimly, desperately aware of each step, each titanic effort it took to lift his faltering legs.

And it wasn't enough. He could feel them drawing closer, bearing down on him. Their hatred and disgust was a solid presence, and he could feel it crushing him even as he tried to run. They wanted him to die. He did not know why, and he was beyond caring at this point. He remembered nothing before the fear. There had been a brief time before the running, but that was only because they hadn't known where he was. As soon as they'd spotted him, the world had decreed him unfit to live.

There was no hope of mercy, of surrender. He could only run.

And he couldn't even do that.

Weakness dragged his legs down like leaden weights. He stumbled. He fell. He slowed to a walk. Then a limp. Then a stagger. And at last, as the maze of alleys yielded a dead end of grimy brick and graffiti, he crumpled, and finally let the weakness pull him down.

He was going to die and he knew it. He feared it. But he had no strength left to fight, and no energy left to run. Not anymore.

He'd tried. Meaningless.

The lights flickered and faded.

He waited.

And _they_ came, in the form of a single soldier. Clad in black Kevlar and a full-face mask with blue lenses, lenses that burned into him with cold apathy.

"Hostile sighted, contact imminent!"

He gasped for breath.

A rifle was cocked.

With a last frenzied effort, he forced his head up, eyes wild with terror. "Please –"

The shot rang out, and Alex died.

The wall behind him vanished, and he was falling. The blackness chased after him, tendrils reaching out in inky masses. It closed in around him, hungrily reaching out to claim what had evaded it for far too long –

But then he was on his feet again, muscles tensed with strength, and the faceless soldier before him was Cross. The veteran sneered, shock baton crackling with white-hot energy. "Mercer."

"Cross," he replied flatly, shifting into a defensive stance. There was something nagging at the corner of his mind, some half-remembered strain of memory that told him something was wrong… but the veteran's weapon was powered up, and his biomass was throbbing with the frenzied anticipation of a fight. "What do you want?"

"Heh." He bristled at the captain's laughter, eyes narrowing to blue slits. "What do you think?"

"What…" He was confused. There was _something, _some phantom reason they shouldn't be fighting –

"Guess you really are as stupid as you look," Cross chuckled.

The captain began to pace in a slow circle around him. Mercer shifted, restless; he followed Cross's movements with a wary gaze, twitching whenever the veteran made an unexpected step or came too close. The man noticed this and smirked.

"Always this restless little bundle of energy," he commented. "Like you're afraid that at any minute now you're gonna burn out."

A low warning snarl rumbled in his throat, and he shifted again. Distantly, he still felt that something was wrong, but his unease was eclipsed by vicious eagerness. Tendrils writhed around his arm, molding it into a barbed whip. The little claws twitched of their own accord like grasping fingers.

"What's that? You going to _growl _at me some more, Mercer? Oh, I'm quaking in my fucking _boots_ here."

That nervous energy was pounding through his skull, so loud he could barely hear past it. Anger. Rage. Pain. Frenzy. Hunger. Everything that made him an animal.

And he was _burning_ with it.

It howled in his chest as he struck, screaming. His tendrils rent the man lengthwise, yet Cross still grinned back, somehow unharmed, eyes gleaming with an amusement that just fueled his rage further. It blazed as he struck the man, again and again and again, reeling his whip back and forth in wide arcs – tearing him apart inside with the sheer _need_ to destroy. It flared and writhed eagerly with each spray of blood he clawed out. It burned him alive until at last, the man was choking in his whipfist's grasp, and the fires of madness melted into the base lust for the kill.

And Cross smiled down on him, face full of mocking pity. "I can tell you all you need to know… about Penn Station!"

He screamed as he fell, screamed under the crushing weight of the truth…

A dark corridor, now. Red lights. Twisted flesh carpeting the ground. Urgency. Something – _someone _– he had to save.

Steel walls turned to glass around him as he ran. There was a slim, kneeling figure at the end of the hall, one that gracefully stood up to greet him as he approached. One slender hand reached out to caress him…

"My baby," Greene crooned, and struck him across the cheek, biomass racing up around her as a looming tower of flesh.

He snarled and leapt back as the monster she had become shrieked, a wave of sound and _power_ that shook the glass hallway apart into millions of crystal shards, and he was falling, falling -

Times Square stretched around him, the sun burning in a sickly orange sky. Greene's monster lashed out at him with massive tendrils, but he threw himself to the side at the last minute, tearing into them with his blade as he passed. It shrilled as he struck it time and time again, manic fury building in his chest once more and filling his limbs with strength. He danced around its thrashing tentacles, cutting and slicing until its supports collapsed and the monster sank to the ground.

He sprang forward, ripping the cocoon open in a single, savage motion.

And the rage was doused like a flame in water when instead of a defeated Greene, his sister tumbled out.

He nearly tripped over himself in his haste to get to her side. "We need to get you to Ragland-"

And she smiled up at him with jagged teeth, eyes burning like _his_. "It's too late for that, _brother_."

"_Dana_!"

The fury had left him; all that was left was concern and shock and horror and soft _human_ feelings, and when she attacked, he could not have protected himself even if he'd wanted to.

She struck him across the chest first, right where his heart should have been – and if there _was_ something there, he felt it break. Even as she swung around for another blow, he spotted a hundred openings, a hundred places he could counter and return her attack – and he couldn't take a single one of them. He could not lift his arms to protect himself when her nails raked across his throat because it was _Dana_, and he would never hurt her and never could –

– but she was a monster and so he already _had_ –

She reared back for a third strike, and Alex rolled out of the way just in time, her kick tearing gouges into the asphalt. She whirled to face him and _snarled_, snarled like an animal, and dove at him again, teeth snapping for his neck. He leapt back to his feet, but for once, she was faster, and he could only stare in abject despair at the sister he no longer knew when her fingers wrapped around his throat and dragged him back to face her.

"You said you'd protect me," she whispered, and lashed out. Her foot caught him squarely in the chest, and the force of the blow sent him sailing backwards across the street. Glass tore jagged lines across his sides as he crashed through a storefront, tumbled into the darkness inside, and bled.

She pounced, and he could not strike back – could not struggle as she straddled his upturned chest like an animal, pinning him to the ground with nails as sharp as claws.

"What's wrong?" Her words had a strange echo to them, a hissing timbre that ran below the voice he used to know. Those horribly _wrong_ silvery eyes were wide with innocent concern. "We're together, Alex."

"Together…"

"…Alex…"

"…Alex…"

"…Alex!"

Alex Mercer jolted, eyes snapping open. His breath came out in quick pants, wild with some thick fear that he was already forgetting. Everything was blurry – he was surrounded by something white and soft. Pillows. That was a first…

The fuzziness in his vision was fading; without lifting his head, he made out grey carpet, a sofa, and the yellow glow of a tall lamp. As he stared, remnants of an unspeakable horror trickled away, slowly washed away by the warmth and familiar scent of the room.

"Alex?"

A soft word, like velvet – he looked up, trying to focus. A familiar heart-shaped face hovered above him. He took a deep breath, a slower one, willing himself to calm down.

"You're awake?" Her voice was as gentle as a feather's touch, faint as a breath of wind.

He nodded, not trusting his mouth to work.

"Oh, thank god." It came out as a sigh of relief. "Thank _god._"

She looked like she was on the verge of tears. Okay, he definitely had to talk now. "Dana," he tried. His voice was scratchy but audible. He licked his lips as he rolled onto his stomach, propping himself upright on his elbows and rising to his knees. His entire body felt tired and stiff… but there was no pain, not really. Just a distant aching along his left side, an ache that faded as his biomass busily reknitted itself.

His voice was a bit steadier when he spoke again. "Dana? What happened?"

"Well, it goes like this. Some big, stupid lug comes into my apartment, falls over, and scares the shit out of me."

"Sorry."

"Alex, I'd get mad if you were hung over_._ Not… half _dead_."

She reached up, brushing a floppy spike of hair out of her eyes.

"I… I tried to move you. I thought I should put you in my bed, but I couldn't get you anywhere and I… I don't know, it felt wrong to roll you through the apartment like a log, all right? I just… look, I tried."

"I know." It was amazing how _normal_ he sounded, she thought – like he hadn't just stumbled into the apartment on the verge of collapse half an hour ago. He still seemed a little dazed, not as twitchy and alert as usual, but he looked… not healthy, but Alex, again, and that horrible burned smell was gone. "Thanks for that, Dana."

"I'm just glad you're all right. I…"

After a moment, she tentatively reached out to touch his cheek. When he made no move to pull away, she gently stroked the side of his face.

It felt strange, but not in a bad way. "Dana?" he asked quietly, after a few seconds had passed.

Her hand twitched. "When you… when you just…" She choked. The next thing he knew, she had seized him in a fierce hug, and he had to reign in the urge to tear away. She heaved a sob. "I was so _worried!"_

He froze up for a frazzled second; then one arm reached out from under her grip and slid around her shoulders, half of its own accord. Some wispy instinct from foreign memories bid him to comfort her, and his posture slackened, rubbing gentle circles on her back as she cried into his shoulder.

"It's okay," another life whispered through his voice. "It's okay."

"But it's not!" she sobbed. "You keep going out and getting hurt, and I just have to sit back here and _watch! _Do you even know what it feels like, when you can't do _anything_? No, you fucking _don't_, because you can just waltz around the city like you're God, you've never had any reason to be afraid. And – and you –"

"Shh. Everything's all right, I promise."

The words came from Bertha Santovicz. The sixty-four-year-old woman had kept in good shape, always going out for at least a morning run each day. She was always a bit touchy about her age, and meticulously dyed her hair every Friday to hide its stark whiteness. She'd been addicted to Mexican food. And more than anything, she loved her son and her grandchildren. She'd prop them up on one knee and read them stories, whichever one they'd choose. She'd cook them lunch when she was around, always smiling at their questions and eager energy as they swarmed around her. And she had always been there with soothing words and gentle hands whenever one of them was scared or hurt.

She'd been visiting them from her native Colorado when she'd gotten caught in the quarantine. And it had just been a case of bad luck when Zeus had spotted her on the street and mistaken her for one of Gentek's senior employees he was trying to track.

It had been quick, at least. She never saw it coming – a jab from behind, then a rush of tentacles. If she was lucky, he might have broken her spine before they dug in and erased her. It was early on. She hadn't seen the city fall apart, never had to worry for the safety of her family. But still, he had been careless then, and it left him feeling queasy. A case of mistaken identity and she was dead, just like that. At the time, he'd examined her memories briefly and then continued on, intent on finding his actual target. It was _easy_ if he ignored the memories – but if he let his mind wander too much, he'd remember the lives behind his meals.

He thought it was a little ironic – and it left him feeling oddly guilty – that she helped him from beyond the grave, despite everything. He knew that they weren't truly _there_; just impressions, records of the lives he'd preserved within him. But he still felt watched. _Judged. _And as he shushed Dana and drew her closer to him, he couldn't help but wonder about three young children to whom he had and had never done the same.

It hurt to remember, but he was grateful for it too. It was twisted of him, maybe, but he just didn't know how to deal with people. Emotions. And he wanted to be there for his sister… even if he had to rely on the experiences of the people he'd eaten in order to do it, and he was the reason she was crying. Yeah. Twisted indeed.

But what she'd said… he gnawed at his lip. She _worried _about him. That was ridiculous. He could take anything. He _knew_ he could take anything, he'd rebuilt himself from a close-range nuclear explosion. He was hardy, to say the least – he was _made_ for war. There were times that he couldn't always _defend_ himself, not wholly, but he always recovered from what he couldn't evade.

And now she'd seen the uglier half of his durability. He wasn't sure if it was some kind of human-by-osmosis masculine pride or an attempt not to give Dana more cause for worry than he already did, but he made it a point of never letting her see any weakness. The parasite – that had been bad enough, but he'd truly needed the help then. If Blackwatch managed to injure him or otherwise leave him in a bad state, he always went out to remedy that before returning to the apartment.

Combine that with all the things she knew he was capable of, and she must have thought him untouchable. Which… he was close. But not close enough.

It took a few minutes, but at last, she got enough of her composure back to dampen her sobs down to sniffles. She furiously rubbed at her eyes, pointedly looking away. "God, just don't ever to that to me again."

He couldn't help but laugh at that. "I'll try."

"Seriously, Alex, you have no idea how fucking scared I was." _She_ had no idea just how fucking scared she could get until he'd fainted right in front of her, body following a hand she hadn't meant to yank back. Alex was _indestructible. _A walking force of nature. Or so she'd thought.

"I know. I'm sorry, Dana. I didn't mean to scare you. I just… things didn't go so well, and I needed to go somewhere…" _Safe_.

"Home," she finished for him. "You don't have to be all stoic and manly about it, you know. It's natural."

"_I'm _not natural."

Her face fell, and he regretted the words instantly. "Don't say that," she muttered, almost… mutinously_._ Then, louder; "Do I even want to know what happened?"

"Nothing huge." Well, there _had _been something huge, but he'd eaten it. "Just some carelessness on my part."

"Uh-huh. And you walk back here a charred mess."

He cringed. She was not going to let him forget about this any time soon. "I'm sorry…"

"_Jesus,_ Alex, stop saying that. It really doesn't suit you." She sighed and craned her neck to gaze out the apartment's lone window.

"Sorry."

Her eyes rolled back to her brother and nailed him with an incredulous glare. He winced.

"I guess I should expect it," she sighed, looking back to the window. "You and all your crazy stuff. Sometimes, it's not that hard to forget what you go up against. I just… I guess I don't see it. The bad stuff. I didn't know what was wrong with you. Were you dead? How was I even supposed to check your vitals? You weren't breathing, but I could see your whole body kind of… rippling. I knew there was something there, but I had no idea what to do."

"Don't worry about it. Please. I'm fine now."

"I know. I just wish there was more I could do than cram a few pillows around you."

Alex lifted his arm to rub his eyes, and was briefly surprised when a familiar twined black tentacle with curved white claws entered his sight rather than pale hand. Well, shit. He'd forgotten to shift back after that whole mess. He knew Dana didn't like to see any of those things that so explicitly made him _not human, _but everything had been so fuzzy…

He focused on his arm, willing the deadly whip to merge back into sleeves and soft skin again. That teeth-gritting pain was gone, which was good. It was amazing what his body could do. Of course, it demanded a hell of a lot for it.

Dana was watching him, one eyebrow lifted. Wearily, he looked up at her.

"My bad, Dana." He sighed, fluttering his newly-reformed fingers. "Forgot."

She snorted. "Don't worry. I've seen all that stuff before. Hell, I used your claws to cut vegetables that one time, remember? It's kind of hard to be scared after that."

He remembered. He also remembered patiently explaining why it would be a bad idea to make a Youtube video out of it while Dana clutched the camcorder to her chest, laughing hysterically at the cucumber slices plastered to his claws. For some reason, everything he said just seemed to make her laugh harder.

"'Sides, I've seen worse… speaking of. These tentacles were, like, arching out of your body and sticking back into you in other places. Kinda glad we already got past what you were and stuff, because otherwise I would have freaked the fuck out. …okay, so I kind of did anyway. But not as much as I would have!"

Alex's lips hardened into a pale line. A horrible thought had occurred to him.

He'd been entirely unconscious. He'd been _damaged._ There would have been no thought, no awareness – no _restraint_. His mind was the lone safety net between the world and the utter havoc he could wreak. If she had tried to poke around at him… maybe nothing. Or maybe…

He felt sick. Moving him around could have gotten her _eaten_. It had happened before. He barely held back a shudder. God, what a horrible thought. What had he been thinking, coming here to rest? He _hadn't _been, and she was safe regardless, but the chance… It was too awful to think about. He was dangerous. And she was safe from him by virtue of his conscious thoughts. He loved her to pieces, but she was only human. And he could have just… dear _god_.

The way he kept secrets from her… like this, it was _dangerous_. And what was it for? His dignity? Fear for what she'd think of him? None of that had anything on her life.

…If it was so vital, why was it that he still couldn't bring himself to admit to everything?

He fidgeted, _knowing _he should confess the more gritty details of his existence and not quite managing to find the courage to do so. No matter how much they'd reconciled

"So… what were you dreaming about?"

_That _broke him out of his thoughts. "What?"

She gestured to where he'd been lying down; he realized that a few of the pillows had been ripped open. Oops. "You were starting to thrash around, uh, just a bit. That's why I woke you."

"Oh. …Sorry about that." He _was_ sorry. There was a reason he rarely slept, and absolutely _never_ did in their apartment. His rest was rarely peaceful, and he'd learned early on that he wasn't a sound sleeper. Which was useful in that he was difficult to sneak up on, but also a tremendous pain in the ass. Normal people rolled around in their beds. Alex Mercer tended to turn whatever bed he was sleeping on into a pincushion, then tear apart the walls with thrashing tendrils and punch holes in the floor. Given that sleep wasn't really a biological necessity for him most of the time, it was just easier to forgo it.

Dana just shrugged. "Hey, it's okay. We all get nightmares sometimes."

"I was not having _nightmares_-"

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Alex, near the end, you were muttering stuff and tearing apart pillows. You don't have to act all stoic about it. I'm not stupid. It was a fucking nightmare. Well, that, or it was something that, as your sister, I _really _don't want to think about. But I can't picture you and that kind of thing anyway." She held up her hands. "Not that I'm trying to!"

Alex, for better or worse, had stopped listening past the 'muttering stuff' bit. He froze up briefly, frown deepening. It was already close to gone, buried beneath stronger memories that clamored for attention, but he remembered a dreamscape of poisonous words and insidious fear. Yet _another _reason he didn't nap around the apartment – Dana did not need to know everything that went on in his head. He was pretty sure she wouldn't like it.

"What was I saying?" he finally asked, voice low.

She pretended to think about it. "Well, it kind of sounded like 'Oh, _Karen_!'" she teased.

"_Dana!"_

"Fine, fine, learn take a joke…" She sighed, looking down and away from him. "You… were saying my name a lot."

Oh. _Oh._ He stared at his feet resolutely and fidgeted. Dana _loved_ to rib on him for his fixation on her already. Well, shit. There went his shame _and_ his credibility.

He was surprised when he felt her little hands on his shoulders. His head turned back up as she pulled him into a gentle hug.

"I'm always here for you, you know," was all she said.

He sighed and finally let himself relax, wrapping an arm around her in return. "…Thanks, Dana."

And he meant it; he really did. He just wished that his real problems had such simple solutions as this.

0o0o0

"What do you make of these reports, sir?"

Colonel Reyes resisted the urge to sigh. As much as he wished otherwise, he wasn't ready to answer that question. He'd spent the past half hour poring over a mission report with narrowed eyes, searching for the affirmative evidence that just hadn't come.

Everything was a mess. They had been so close to wrapping up this entire clusterfuck in Manhattan. So close to being able to pull out of the city, to focus on neutralizing the single loose end and leave the last gasps of Redlight to the Marine Corps. Then Alex _fucking_ Mercer had decided that fucking the city over just once wasn't enough for the world. The city was back into the nightmare of nearly three months ago, except resources were exhausted and _he_ had somehow ended up in charge of this mess. Zeus had somehow bypassed all security and freed something so lock-and-key he'd only heard of it this week, alongside all the other crazy shit that had made its way to its desk in Samson's wake. Having a high rank was all good and well until you were the _highest_. When all of the fingers pointing 'he's in charge' ended up facing you and everyone you used to point to was dead.

As the highest-ranking officer still in the area, he'd been forced to assume control. The entire affair was infuriating. He had enough on his hands stepping into the center of a power vacuum without being pressed into his predecessor's suspicions. And yet, when he'd read the papers, he'd grudgingly had to accept that Samson had been onto something when he had picked out possible enemies within.

But while Samson had been hell-bent on looking deeper into these loose ends, Reyes couldn't afford to devote that much energy to them. He brushed his hand against his forehead. It was just… too much. The red line had been pushed back. The media was only stilled through extensive threats and vigilant air policing. And now their own operatives were under suspicion.

Cross… there was a strange case if he'd ever seen one. Sole survivor of Project Carnifex, Blackwatch ace-in-the-hole for over thirty years. Famous for always getting the job done – including taking down a Runner singlehandedly – and being fiercely devoted to whichever team he was assigned to. Codename Zeus had decimated the Wisemen nearly down to the last man. There was definitely a grudge there. But there were scattered reports that he'd been spotted with Zeus on the Reagan, and that was when the reports had started paying attention.

The results didn't make sense. Cross, as the Specialist, had a relatively long leash to run around on. But even so, there were a lot of gaps in his record. _Recent _record, which was more worrying. At the same time, his squad was accredited with a massive amount of clear successes in New York's outbreaks. Hives cleared, underground hotspots smoked out – Cross was fighting for Blackwatch to the best of his ability.

_Then why the need for all the secrecy…?_

The possibility that he had somehow enlisted Zeus for his own purposes… it made little sense even without considering Cross's probable vendetta and Zeus's indiscriminate hatred towards everything, but it was there. And that was why a trap of sorts had been passed down command; give Cross and his team a seemingly impossible mission. If he was in cahoots with Zeus, he would doubtless call it in for help. Then provide backup – they didn't want to _lose _the man if he was innocent – and see what was going on. Plant some cameras on the scene beforehand as a failsafe.

Murphy's law had first shown its hand when the team they'd sent ahead to plant cameras had been overrun before even reaching the target Hive. A bunch of men and equipment wasted. But the plan could still function without the cameras, even if they made things that much harder. So he'd kept everything on schedule and proceeded.

And then some miserable fuck-up down the chain had _informed _Cross about the envoy. Somebody was about to get demoted through the floor.

They'd arrived on the site to find Zeus in an apparent firefight with Cross. The fact that it was _there _was suspicious, but it wasn't enough. That it had appeared at the e_xact moment _they'd arrived should have been a tell. It would have been enough once – _more _than enough – but no longer.

The mission hadn't been a complete failure – they'd managed to land considerable damage on the target, even if it had gotten away in the end. But what should have been definitive proof was only a haze of uncomfortable 'maybes'.

_Cross… what are you playing at?_

But the captain had also handed a defeated Zeus over to them. That was the cincher, the part that brought everything else to a halt. It was possible he had just been playing to save his skin at that point, and yet… he had nearly forty years of devoted service under his belt. There wasn't a _reason._

In normal circumstances, he simply would have had the captain terminated on suspicion alone. Clean. No room for error, no loose ends. But these weren't normal circumstances. He sighed, tracing a circle on his desk with one gloved finger. They were down to the dregs as it was. Lower quality recruits. Shoddier equipment. Both broke faster. They couldn't hold this island forever, and he knew it. Detrick was already out of men to give. And Blackwatch couldn't afford to lose one of their best field operatives on suspicion at this point. Cross was just too fucking valuable.

"Sir?"

Reyes blinked. He'd almost forgotten the executive officer was there.

He took a deep breath and made the call. "Send him out again."

His subordinate wouldn't dare speak out against him, but he could see the disquiet plain on his face. The colonel sighed. "Continue observation, of course. I don't trust him. But he's one of our best assets at this point and we need all the manpower we can get."

"Yes, sir."

He leaned back in his chair. "Put the Wiseman team back on standard duty. Actually, scratch that. Continue giving them high-level assignments. Somebody's got to get it done, and Cross is one of our most capable men. Certainly the most likely to survive them, and if he really is working with Zeus, it's going to come out of the woodwork again. I want schematics for another trap set up sometime this week – and get it done _right _this time. We'll pull those out if anything new comes up. In the meantime… just find something useful for him to do. If I'm going to keep him alive, I want my money's worth out of the deal."

"Understood." The executive officer saluted and quickly left the room.

Alone, the colonel sighed. There was so much shit he had to deal with, and he barely knew where to start.

He glanced out the room's lone window. The sun set early these days. Autumn. Once a time filled with walks through the countryside, watching the vibrant leaves. Now spent alone with more responsibility than he liked to shoulder, tasked with keeping a dying city from falling apart.

"Damn it," he muttered, bringing his fist down on the desk. "We're losing New York." He'd never have spoken it to somebody else, but sometimes he wondered if it was only him that realized it, or if they all knew and pretended not to. Detrick's trickling resources aside, they'd been screwed over the instant Pariah escaped containment. Manhattan might have been an enormous, tightly packed petri dish for Redlight to thrive in, but it could be isolated. Brooklyn didn't have those natural boundaries, and it wasn't going to hold as long. Their first order of business had been to erect nearly a solid line of soldiers and Bloodtox blowers between it and Queens, but it was only a matter of time before the virus slipped through.

It had taken longer to get up the barricades and razorwire – and of course, that had been the signal for the _civilians _to start panicking. Now the guard patrol was harassed by every single fucker with a sob story, like _everyone else in the fucking borough _didn't have the same problems, and now there were reports of some of them turning up with guns. Military-grade stuff, not handguns and shit. It disgusted him – the self-absorbed fucks were so bent on their own safety that they'd happily break the red line and carry the virus with them to the rest of the country. Desperate resistors met the same fate as infected carriers, and they were short enough on supplies as it was without having to waste them on a bunch of goddamn panicking sheep.

And they could only push so hard to get Queens evacuated – and create an empty buffer region – before it was too late, and the odds of the virus being in that borough would become too high to allow it. It was _working_, but not fast enough. And if already-proven biological Armageddon wasn't enough, he wondered exactly what kind of fire would need to be lit under their asses in order to get the populace moving. A literal one? He almost laughed. At this rate, it might have just been easier to cordon off all of New York City and let the entire island network burn.

Outside, a haze of smoke floated above the reddening Brooklyn skyline.

Only a matter of time.


	15. Treacherous Thoughts

There was nothing quite like some good exercise after too much time spent lazing around.

Alex bounded across the rooftops of Chelsea, enjoying the rush of the wind across his biomass. It was amazing how fast he could heal, really. Everything was in perfect working order again, damage healed over so perfectly it was difficult to believe he'd had a third of his body fried an hour ago.

So now he was running across the clusters of apartments in the residential areas, checking for signs of infection in the area. Smelling for it, to be precise. He was… uniquely in-tune with the virus, for obvious reasons, and while his sense of smell wasn't so precise that he could pick out a single infected individual in a crowd, he'd be able to look at the same crowd and know that _somebody_ in it carried Redlight without needing to tune into the Hivemind for more information.

He faltered, pausing briefly in his run when a familiar building caught his eye. The apartment complex was nothing particularly flashy, but he recognized the gaping hole in its side with a pang. Such things weren't uncommon in Manhattan, but he knew this one – Dana's old safehouse, back in the first Outbreak. That same safehouse where she'd taken him on that first night, where he'd dazedly stumbled back for help with a genetically-engineered parasite siphoning out his insides. Where his first Leader Hunter had broken in, stealing his sister away while he'd been paralyzed with shock… He shook his head and dug his feet into the concrete, taking off again with a bit more fervor than was necessary. It was all in the past now.

So far, Chelsea was turning up clean – the area hadn't had a large outbreak in a few weeks. Midtown West, on the other tentacle, had not been so clean. But it wasn't overrun; Redlight was just taking root there again, and there was nothing for him to destroy – no Hives, no monsters, just that lingering pall of death and carrion. He'd have to come back to it later, but not being able to deal with something _right now_ always left him frustrated and edgy.

He continued south, keeping one eye on the streets below. This place was always a few shades more alive than the north; fewer abandoned stores, more construction efforts. Of course, he couldn't forget the reason _why_ the crowds flocked here, and that was because the military had dug into this place like a stubborn weed – he needed to be careful.

Alex glanced across the bay, down towards Brooklyn. He had to wonder how it was faring – they had no figure like himself to cull the infection. He thought he might have seen a hive across the water, but it was too far away to be sure.

_Wonder how long it's going to be before I have to visit there, too._

He sighed and nimbly leapt to another rooftop. Dana always chewed him out for refusing to use the streets like a normal person, but there were _reasons _for it. It hid him from casual eyes, let him maintain watch over his surroundings. High ground allowed him to easily keep track of several blocks' worth of activity, in all directions.

And it let him focus, kept him away from that singular mass of people that crawled through the streets. Kept them _safe_ from him. Where he walked, destruction invariably followed, and he did enough monstrous things as it was. Monstrous… was it monstrous of him to defend himself when it was always the military who started the fight, always a marine or Blackwatch grunt that cried Zeus and began the war? He shivered slightly, jaw going a bit slack. Was it monstrous when he was merely looking after himself, destroying all possible threats… keeping himself healthy to better weather their fire…

He leaned forward, peering down over the edge with eyes that were suddenly sharp with intent. How he _wanted_ them… his biomass gave a hungry gurgle in agreement. So little effort, and so much more return; these grounds teemed with far more prey than the sparse Harlem blocks he normally walked…

…_Prey…_

He jerked back with an involuntary snarl, teeth clenched. It fell silent in his ears as he recoiled, pulling away, but it had been there and he knew it for what it was. He'd _felt_ it that time. Not just the craving. Something so much worse.

The whispers.

He knew that sound – the roiling, seething whispers that teemed like some massive cancerous mass. Like his own mind, but with a thousand times more festering voices – and they all spoke at once, all wailed and groaned and hissed in a tide of sound that had threatened to drive him mad before.

It was the hivemind.

Recognition was followed by panic, a defensive recoil – they were_ in his head_ and he wanted them _out_. With a mental jerk, the connection snapped… but when he gradually let the tension drain from his muscles, the whispers reappeared in the corners of his mind, tracing faint patterns onto his thoughts until he yanked away again, holding himself there this time.

His breaths grew fast. This had never happened before. The hivemind was there, flitting at the very edge of his consciousness like a pesky fly, but it held no sway over him. When he had to make use of it, he experienced it at his own discretion.

Except for when Pariah screwed around with him, he realized. Pariah forced him to obey by imposing his will on him, _through the hive._ But that had only happened when Pariah was physically _around!_ Not when he was on his lonesome…

When he wasn't focusing on drowning them out, he could hear the Infected, now that he knew to identify it. Maybe it was just this moment... but looking back, he doubted it was. Was he slipping? Or was Pariah pulling the strings from the shadows? And if – _if_ – he could twist his mind like clay at any time, from any place… what was to keep him from subjugating Alex at the worst possible moments? Images of Dana, brutally mauled or writhing with the virus, raced across his mind, and he felt sick.

He was going to have to be careful. Keep an eye on himself at all times, watching for signs – mood swings, viciousness where it was wholly undeserved, thoughts that didn't belong to him…

Then again, had there ever been a time when his mind had truly been his own?

It was with grim understanding that he found he had no answer.

0o0o0

Detwiller leaned against the wall and sighed. Another mission. Never a dull moment these days, with the state of things as bad as it was. He'd already suited up; his gear was secure and his grenade launcher was propped against his knees.

Most of the Wisemen were swapping stories and boasts to each other as they finished preparing for deployment, but he just couldn't find the right enthusiasm right now. Other things weighed too heavily on his mind.

It was bad enough, almost getting killed. Having to rely on anyone else meant you were incompetent – one slip was all it took. But getting rescued by a teammate, hell, any other soldier – that was teamwork. The bonds of war, the Wisemen's camaraderie.

Getting rescued by Zeus, in comparison, was a giant ball of fuck, and he didn't know where to begin with making sense of it.

It had been one of those moments where time slowed down for the express purpose of rubbing it in his face later. He'd been gunning for the Stalker… a misfired shot had gone off too close, knocking him off his feet, and he'd been flat on his back, the worst position to right himself. The spot where he'd hit the edge of the rooftop was a nice, livid bruise right now, and he'd locked his knees and struggled for balance as gravity pulled the top half of his body down. Right then and there, he'd _known_ that he was going to fall several stories into a horde of Infected. One of those two things was going to kill him, and he hoped to God it was the fall.

And then there was a fucking tentacle crushing his chest, jerking him back up and yanking him through the air like a kid's toy. He almost pissed himself. The ultimate nightmare of every soldier in New York, the moment every one of them prayed would never happen – but then nothing _did_. Zeus just stared at him gormlessly for a couple of the longest seconds he'd ever known and… _dropped him._

_Why?_ Why had Zeus saved him? What could have possibly motivated it to do such a thing? Definitely not human decency, that was for damn sure. Zeus hated them and they hated it… _him…?_ back. If the way the monster looked at them half the time was any indication, it… _he_ would have happily eaten all of them for lunch. He was a psychotic, murderous, unholy abomination from the deepest pits of hell.

So why?

In a span of a few seconds, he'd gone from knowing he was going to die by a crowd of zombies or a several-story drop, _then _to death by tentacle cannibalism. Zeus had reeled him in like a fish… and then just stared at him like he'd never seen a soldier before and had no idea what to do with one. Like he hadn't even known what he was doing. Detwiller snorted. Of course he hadn't. Mercer never would have done it out of the goodness of his heart.

It just… _why_? What was Zeus playing at? Ugh, if the goddamn monster expected something back from him, he could go fuck himself with something sharp. He wasn't going to get taken in so easily.

He hoped to hell that Cross wasn't calling Zeus in for this next assignment. He missed the days when his job was just shooting and recon among comrades. Bringing secrecy and psychotic monsters into the mix just made the whole thing hollow.

"All right, listen up." The captain's voice rang clear, forcing him to shake off his thoughts. "Here's how it is. There's a hotspot down in East Village. Nest of Hydras. We're destroying it."

"Sir?" Detwiller looked over to see who'd spoken. Apparently, Black was wondering the same thing that he was. "Is Zeus…?"

Cross snorted. "I don't need Mercer to hold our fucking hands whenever we've got a job to do." His voice sobered. "And I'm sorry. I don't want you to think that I don't have faith in you when I call for backup. I don't like it much more than you do. I'm just through taking risks with the playing field. He's a damage soaker. He keeps the hive's attention. All right, so maybe he saves us a few bullets too. I haven't forgotten that you're all damn good at your jobs. So no, no Mercer. But if my timing's not off, we do have a little something else…"

He gestured to the distance. Detwiller zoomed in his sights, then grinned.

"'Bout goddamn time we got some toys."

0o0o0

Tanks.

Alex really liked tanks.

He'd travelled a ways east over the past few minutes, changing course so that he didn't end up in the military-controlled Financial district at the island's southernmost stretch. Perching on top of the Trump Building, he happened to glance down at the right time and found the perfect thing to brighten his dismal mood – a line of five armored tanks, meandering through the streets.

There was nothing like a good bit of mayhem to pull him out of a mood. He wanted in on this.

He pounced down, leaping from the seventy-story building to a series of lower skyscrapers to dampen his fall. Screams rose from the street below as he neared the ground, civilians either recognizing the terrible Zeus zeroing in on his prey or believing they were witnessing a suicide.

But seventy stories brought with them a hell of a lot of momentum, and he came down hard, pulverizing a street lamp into so much glass and iron; the sidewalk below didn't fare much better. He wasted no time in springing up from the wreckage and leaping across the street to the procession. He caught the nearest tank by the barrel, swinging around and alighting on the top, right next to the hatch. If he listened carefully, he could hear muffled shouts coming from below. It brought a grin to his face.

He pulled at the hatch and felt somebody on the other side let go. None too soon for them, too – it came off easily under his strength. He jumped down into the vehicle and pulled the disc back over the opening, bracing himself for the shots that accompanied the last stand of a desperate team.

He was mildly surprised when no bullets immediately tore through his biomass. He blinked a few times, eyes adapting from the bright daylight outside. There were four men inside; Blackwatch, not Marines, he noted with considerable satisfaction. All four were pointing guns – in one case, a knife – at him, yet nobody had opened fire. Paralyzed with fear, or did they just realize that it was hopeless?

He frowned slightly. It occurred to him that they smelled… familiar. Not memorized like Dana or his apartment, but still familiar. As unlikely as it was, whatever part of his brain kept down that data told him that they'd met before – probably several times, if it was enough for him to remember a scent. And overlaid upon that was one even stronger…

What cinched it was that instead of opening fire and hurling themselves at him with desperate adrenaline, these soldiers just stared. Wary, but also somehow… indignant? So he settled for merely staring back, against his first instincts. _Let them make the first move._

Finally, the gunman spoke up.

"What the _fuck_, Zeus?"

0o0o0

Cross was not happy. He really was not.

All right, so he had another assignment he was ridiculously understaffed for. At least Red Crown saw fit to give him some actual firepower for this mission, but it was by no means a comfortable arrangement. Those days were long gone, relegated to the distant past when a particular unholy abomination had yet to chew through their ranks like a buzzsaw.

The veteran was alone outside of the five tanks, jogging alongside the line. It wasn't hard to keep pace with his team, meandering through the fairly crowded streets as they were, and battle-grown, virally enhanced musculature gave him enough endurance to keep up this speed for hours.

And then Alex _fucking_ Mercer had to drop from the sky like the opportunistic asshole he was and rip open one of the tanks' ports.

He had, over his career, experienced several grueling moments where he'd felt his stomach drop and his nerves burn with pure panic. This was one of them. He was already running to the tank before Zeus had finished tearing it open, but he knew there was nothing he could do and it _strangled _him. He was familiar with Mercer did this kind of thing – even the lowest grunt in Blackwatch knew how the monster could turn a protective vehicle into a deathtrap, breaking in like boring a hole into a coconut and devouring the contents inside.

He didn't care _how_ he was going to pull it off, but he was going to blow the fucker _apart –_

But once his brain had finished tying itself into murderous loops, he had realized that, judging by the team's private radio channel, Winder's group sounded more confused and angry than dying in horrible agony.

He had no idea _how_ they'd evaded indiscriminate slaughter – Mercer wasn't known for hesitation – but _God_ he did not have words to express what a massive fucking relief that was. So he'd taken a few steps away and waited for his heart to stop trying to slam its way through his chest.

But now he was seeing something _else_ he didn't like. Namely, that there were four people getting out of the tank's open hatch, and not one of them had a leather jacket. Eyes narrowed, he lifted his radio.

"Mercer. That's our tank. Get out of it."

The rest of the team on the communications system fell silent. The anticipation was palpable.

"Not anymore, it's not." The bastard sounded almost _cheerful_.

Cross growled. Catastrophe narrowly averted or not, he hadn't forgiven Mercer for scaring him to hell and nearly killing his men on mistaken identity. "Zeus…"

"Cross, I want to blow something up and I am taking this hunk of metal with me whether you like it or not. Don't worry. I'm an _excellent_ shot." There was a pause. "They said something about hydras?

"Mercer, stop making things complicated, get the fuck out of there, and let us do our jobs. I'm on thin ice as it is. Just… go away and eat Infected or whatever it is you do."

"Heh. You're pushy today. Been too long since I've taken a joyride in one of these. Puts me in a good mood. So… tell you what. I'll come along and blow them apart."

The captain took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly through his teeth. "You're not going to listen to anything I say, are you?"

"If I don't like what I'm hearing, no, I won't." He could practically hear Mercer shrug.

He sighed. "Fine. Just… fine. You know what? I don't even care anymore. But disguise yourself, will you? And if I'm going to let you have the _fuckmothering_ tank… can you at least _try_ to return that armor in one piece?"

Alex just laughed.

There was a click, and his end fell silent. Cross swore colorfully.

0o0o0

Alex laughed and clicked off the radio. He didn't need Cross to ruin his fun.

From his back, a series of tendrils emerged, snaking their way into the various control systems left unattended. The largest wound itself into the commander's display unit and the gun controls – on these M1 tanks, he knew the switchboard by touch at this point.

He concentrated briefly, letting his surface swirl and melt into the greys and blacks of Blackwatch raiment. He'd humor Cross's request, at least. It was a reasonable enough precaution, although it still was probably going to look weird under scrutiny. Usually, it took four or five guys to drive one tank. Not one man with a… matrix of… tentacles. Okay, so there was no point at all. He snorted and changed back.

He smiled as he eased himself into the driver's chair. _It's been too long._

It only took him a few seconds to get re-acclimated with the controls. So many men had operated these with practiced ease, and he'd pried open their beloved vehicles like one might crack a crab shell to get at the meat inside. Commandeered their rides for a brief spree of destruction, commandeered their mastery for eternity.

He followed the tanks ahead of him like a good underling, keeping the pace and even stopping when they stopped. Cross had no right to complain.

But he forced his way ahead of the rest when they finally reached their destination, flicking the radio back on so he could listen to the other drivers raging at him. He allowed himself a wide smirk as he surveyed the area. It was one of those multi-building apartment complexes – a few hexagonal brick buildings scattered in a massive parking lot and a few recreational areas. Judging by the way the entire place was riddled with potholes from hell, this was definitely the Hydra nest.

"Mercer!" Cross's voice brought his attention back to the radio. "What the hell?"

"What the hell _what_?" He parked his tank, keeping his eyes on the nearest holes.

He heard a thud from the captain's end. "What the hell as in, what the hell did you just speed up and drive over tank three for? Are you insane? This isn't fucking bumper cars!"

"Oh, that." Alex shrugged. "He was blocking me."

Cross spluttered, then spent a few moments illustrating exactly what he thought Mercer should do with himself.

"Listen," he finally ground out. "I don't care that you are fundamentally incapable of working with anyone. This is _my_ operation, _my_ rules. You were the one that insisted on tagging along, so get the fuck into formation before I _make_ you."

"Oh?" Cross did not like the sudden slyness in Zeus's words. "If you'd rather put one of your precious, easily destroyed soldiers at the front of the line instead, go ahead. It is your call after all, _Captain_."

The captain paused. "Mercer, _fuck you._"

He laughed. "I'll pass."

"Don't act like you're doing any of us a favor," Cross growled. "You just want to be in the middle of everything. Protecting anyone doesn't come into it."

Alex clapped slowly. "_Brilliant _deduction, captain. I was afraid you'd – _dammit!"_

He yanked the handlebar as the back of his tank suddenly jerked upwards, treads slipping as he tried to pull a tight turn forward. He got the tank away from the rising hydra before it could flip him over, but the fucking machine didn't want to turn around. With a growl, he pulled the tank's cannon around with a tentacle while he drove forward. The gun _also_ felt like taking its sweet time to respond, so he funneled more biomass towards his grip to pull harder.

He started firing before it was done turning, and his first shot missed entirely. But the second's explosion clipped it, and the third was a solid hit that sent the hydra reeling back, pincers snapping at empty air. A stream of bullets from one of the other tanks drove it back underground before anyone could land a killing hit.

Cross was barking out orders to his men, and the Wisemen were already calling target coordinates; Alex tuned him out, searching the ground for signs of another hydra. He spun the cannon back forward, extending a few more tentacles for a better grip. He couldn't feel the ground shifting, not through so many tons of sturdy metal, but he knew they were there. And he was damn eager to find them.

The other tanks rolled across the parking lot. Their final positions were widely spaced, turrets pointed in all directions. Cross and the handful of men Alex had evicted were nowhere to be found, but if he knew the captain at all, the man was bound to be around here somewhere.

Gravel showered upwards as a second hydra tore its way to the surface, but it was on the far end of the lot, and another one of the Wiseman tanks was between them. He watched with keen interest as it opened fire on the Infected monster. The hydra had a car in its mandibles, but before it could throw it, another tank blasted it to pieces in its grip. Not a bad shot at all… He could see how this team worked together, compensating for their individual weakness by keeping focus on at least some of their teammates at all times. Of course, it was just that – they put their strength into community because it was their only option to be strong. He did not fit into their picture - he needed no other being to watch his back, and focusing on anyone else's protection during a fight was a massive hit to his concentration.

So Cross and his much-vaunted teamwork wasn't necessarily _wrong_, he thought, turning the tank's secondary turret to one of the numerous snakes that were surfacing. It just didn't apply to him. Like so much else humanity had produced.

Things were definitely heating up. The hornet's nest had been stirred, and the bees were on the warpath. He wasn't sure where the metaphor had come from, but it was accurate enough. Disturb one Infected, and all of them in the area would react. One of the perks to being a mindless part of the conglomerate, he supposed dryly.

It was strange, though. Hydras were relatively rare, even when the Outbreak had been in full swing. Not only were there a lot of them, but there _weren't _a lot of other Infected. A few walkers had shown up, serving no more of a distraction than a speed bump, and he'd shot down at least two hunters on a roof.

But it was hard to focus on things like _why _for more than a few seconds at a time when the rest of his mind was burning with the desire to kill. Movement to his side, something big – a _leader_, he noted with intense interest. It had been a while since he'd seen one. A shame he wasn't going to enjoy the primal thrill of tearing it down with his own hands, but as long as he was going to destroy it, it didn't matter. There'd always be more.

He got off a few shots with the turret, but the thing was quick; through craftiness or dumb luck, it kept ducking out of his sights, forcing him to turn repeatedly. The tank was powerful, but it was slow and ungainly to maneuver, and he felt himself growing increasingly frustrated with that as he only managed to land superficial shots. On the other side, he was pretty sure the leader hunter had broken something on the front end of his tank, but he couldn't _see_, damn it.

When the leader leapt away for a brief moment, he zeroed in on the chance, hauling the cannon around hard enough to make the metal screech. And then a shell had come out of nowhere, nailing the hunter and staggering it. He fired, but the shot went wide, and the other tank got off two more hits with its main cannon, finishing it off.

He leaned forward and snarled aloud, fingers twitching.

"Got a problem, Zeus?" Now that unknown Wiseman was _taunting_ him. He gnashed his teeth.

"That was _my _kill!"

"You could start by saying thanks," came the smug reply.

He just hissed, clenching one hand into a fist. That bastard had been _his_, damn it.

_This is irrational_, he realized. It was a dim thought, flickering somewhere near the back of his mind, but it was enough to give him pause. He was getting way too absorbed in this if he was letting himself get twisted up over who got to kill what. He forced himself to lean back in his seat and let go of it.

…Okay, so maybe Dana's stress balls weren't such a bad idea. But if he admitted it, she'd start thinking all the other things she brought up were good ideas too. And that was a horrifying road to start down on.

But thinking about Dana brought a tiny smile to his face, shower incident or not, and his eyes were a bit clearer when he straightened up and re-oriented the tank.

While turning, he finally saw where Cross was; the captain and the four straggler soldiers were on one of the apartment's roofs, firing at the hydras from there. A couple of them didn't seem to be properly armed for the job, but whatever. He was doing a better job with the tank than any of them could.

Another hydra burst from the ground, not even ten meters in front of him. It was already damaged – maybe the one that he'd first run into, it didn't matter. What did matter was that it was towering over his vehicle directly in his line of fire, the textbook definition of an easy target, and that the mere sight of it elicited another rush of whatever he substituted for adrenaline. He snickered as he slammed a tentacle into the controls and fired off a shell. He couldn't hear the hydra shriek over the dull roar of machinery, but watching it twist and thrash in its death throes was almost as satisfying.

"Mercer, what the fuck are you doing?" Cross grated over the radio.

"Killing things."

"Yeah, and you're beating the shit out of your tank too. What the hell are you thinking? You fire at that close range, you're gonna blow the armor right off this thing. Yours is already smoking."

"And?"

"Goddammit, Mercer, tanks aren't disposable!"

"Uh." Alex had nothing to say to that.

"Damn it." Cross sighed. "You are absolutely fucking impossible. You know what? I don't even care anymore. Just… you break that thing, you're not getting another one. Got it?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. I'm trying to enjoy myself here."

He tuned out the captain's furious reply and turned his focus back to his surroundings. Killjoy.

So far, none of the tanks had been severely damaged, but more Infected were pouring into the area. Big things, like Hunters and even a few Stalkers. The latter subspecies didn't seem to know what to do with the tanks, but the former did, and maybe it was coincidence, but he wouldn't have been surprised if they were singling him out. They were a lot more interested in his tank than they were the rest. And said tank was showing it. He could feel the harsh grinding when he accelerated, hear a persistent sparking noise from the front.

He'd just finished off a particularly irritating hunter when something _slammed_ into the hull with enough force to dent the ceiling in. The tank rocked dangerously, and the impact crushed at least half the gunner's controls, if not all of them.

Alex snarled – a seething, continuous sound that flowed through his clenched teeth like a river. Angry was too weak a word; he was _furious_, boiling with indignant hatred at whatever thing _dared _to strike at him, to break something that belonged to _him_. He would tear it apart and taste its fear. Even the radio chatter hissed for him to _kill_-

No. No, it wasn't, because he could hear the Wisemen over the radio and they were definitely not teeming with mad whispers. Then that meant – _oh, fuck._

Cross's voice cut in through the haze. "Stop with the fucking growling, Mercer."

And that hive-enthralled part of his mind heard it too, focusing on this new stimulus with vicious intensity. _Prey. Kill._ Every inch of him screamed to claw his way out of this metal cage and to _destroy_.

The tank heaved again, side buckling.

He groaned, pressing a hand against his heard. Hard. "Cross," he ground out. "Cover me for a second, will you?"

There was a pause. The veteran wasn't exactly deferent to Mercer, and he had half a mind to take the opportunity to give him as much hell as Zeus gave him. But he could hear the strain in that hoarse voice, and he knew that the Blacklight virus did not ask for help lightly.

He'd save the taunts for later. "Vicks, get your gunner on that while Zeus gets his shit together."

Mercer ground his teeth at the snickers that followed. His arms roiled with tendrils in tune with the seething whispers in his skull. He gripped the dashboard with his other hand, squeezing his eyes shut.

_In and out, Alex, in and out. Keep your head on straight._

This… _rage_… wasn't like him. All right, so maybe he'd flown into a screaming rage once or twice before, but Taggart had merited it, the miserable coward. He was not a tolerant or patient person, and temper seemed to run in the Mercer family, but this wasn't normal. He didn't flip out over getting hurt, he was used to offhand insults. The Hive… being a part of it was more than just hearing its chorus. It was getting _inside_ him.

The tank rocked again. He blocked out the explosions, the hydra's shrieks, the gunfire, the millions of voices that clamored in his skull. He focused on his own memories, the ones he knew to be uniquely and truly _his, _and the measured pace of his breath. And gradually, _gradually, _the hisses receded, fading into the distance as he pulled away.

He gasped aloud when he felt the connection finally sever, breaking away entirely. It was like being doused in the bay, but without the pain – just the shock and the cold. He drew in a shuddering breath, unclenching his fingers and leaning back into the seat.

"Mind telling me what that was all about?" Cross did not sound amused.

"No thanks," Alex bit out. Admitting any weakness to Cross was unappealing enough. Giving it over the radio with all of the Wisemen listening in? Not a chance.

He groaned as he turned back to the tank's controls. The interior had been pretty damaged – he could smell smoke now, and there were a lot of unhealthy sounds that tanks normally didn't make.

He pulled down on the throttle. The tank spluttered for a second, but he felt no other response. "Move, dammit," he growled, pulling it as far as it went. Still nothing-

And then there was a loud crack and he was holding a piece of the handle in his fist. He fumed silently for a second, then sighed and inspected the broken throttle in his hands. _Yeah, this would be a good time to admit it's done for. _

He tossed the handle to the side. After a second's thought, he briefly shifted his arms and carved the radio system out of the controls. It wouldn't last long, but he was pretty sure these things had backup batteries. _If_ he hadn't ruined all the wiring beyond repair when he'd clawed it out.

"Cross, does this thing still work?" he tested.

"Would I-" The captain broke off, and a few gunshots rang out. From the sound of it, he was in the middle of something. "Fucking know?" Cross exhaled sharply. There was another bang. "Try to work the damn tank yourself, you don't need me to tell you that."

"Well, that answers it," he muttered to himself, not bothering to correct the veteran. Still holding the radio against his chest, he jabbed up at the hatch with a tentacle and speared a hole through it. A quick sideways jerk and the heavy disc was thrown aside like a poorly engineered Frisbee. He climbed up through the hole and out of the tank, using his numerous tentacles in place of his occupied hand.

The radio crackled. "You didn't even bother to disguise yourself," came the captain's irritated voice. "Do you ever listen to anything I say, or do you think I just give instructions because I like to listen to the sound of my own voice?"

Mercer smirked up at the Cross's rooftop and wiggled his tentacles at him. "The way I drive's a bit conspicuous."

Cross didn't bother to reply, but his radio caught a sigh as he went back to aiming.

Alex frowned and took a second to mull over how he was going to manage holding onto the radio without restricting his ability to fight. In the end, he pulled most of the extra tentacles back into his body, using the remaining few to clutch the radio close to his body. It was awkward and he didn't like it, but he needed to keep an open line with Cross and his team if he wanted to get through this whole mess without getting a shell to the face.

He twisted and made an experimental jump about fifteen feet to the side, testing the radio in his grip. It didn't shift or chafe much, so he began to move in earnest, springing over a straggling group of Infected and building up speed. His fingers lengthened into knifelike claws on the fly, whistling through the air at his sides. He swerved around one of the tanks; the radio emitted a series of shouts on cue. He ignored them, pulling his arms up as he homed in on his first target; a hydra, surrounded by a few lesser Infected.

He took out the smaller ones first, tearing through them with his speed alone. He got a few shallow swipes in on the Hydra next, dancing around it with sharp turns and glancing blows that the twisting creature couldn't keep up with. As he lost speed, he shifted into his blade, cutting deeper, harder. Finally, when the Hydra began to bow, he leapt skyward for power and struck down on the retreating worm like a guillotine, shearing it in half.

And then it was on to the next group.

Again and again he struck, a compact little cyclone of tentacles, spikes, and primal rage. Too quick to escape and too powerful to stop, he cut through the opposition like a human-shaped carving knife.

_You can pretend all you like for her, but you know this is what you are._

He flicked gore from his claws and tried to ignore himself.

It was maybe six rounds of the same song and dance before anything changed; the Hydras were flagging, but lesser Infected were starting to pour in in droves. A particularly large group was starting to form between two of the tanks, possibly to cut them off. Mostly Walkers, but there were a few of the more dangerous variants among the mass.

Alex shifted his arm yet again, pulling a long stretch of biomass into the tight, coiled power of his whipfist. There was nothing better for what some soldiers euphemistically called crowd control.

And from there, it was just a matter of leaping into place and riding the waves.

The Whipfist, he'd learned, best served two purposes. In one scenario, it was a long-distance, as-of-yet-unbreakable grappling hook for quick getaways and picking pesky targets out of the sky. And in the other… when he faced a lot of weakly armored targets and limited time to deal with them, little could match its sheer return per swing.

This was one of those other times.

He landed with a crunch and twisted it overhead like a lasso, building up speed for a few seconds before bringing it level and swinging. He tore through the Walkers in a wide circle, drawn in a spray of splattered blood. Gobs of Infected meat slopped against the pavement as he pulled up and swung down, slamming his whip to the ground with the force of a train crash. A Stalker was next to go, brittle body cut in two; he reeled his tentacle back and rolled to avoid its partner's claws. Seconds later, those joined the first as a smattering of malformed parts on the ground. All part of a gory, frenzied dance; Alex didn't miss a step.

Hunters were thicker, sturdier; they didn't break from his wider swings. A quick spear or two of compressed force to the chest remedied that, and it was on to the next, and then the next, until no more Infected stumbled forth to replace the ones he cut down.

He slid to a stop, panting slightly as he surveyed the carnage. He'd taken care of his group pretty cleanly, in a matter of speaking, but another wave of Infected was swarming in on the other end of the lot, and there was a third group already in place to his south.

_Too many of these damn things everywhere – not a problem for me, but those damn tanks…_ Tanks were good against powerful targets, but less so against swarms of smaller opponents. Most Walkers couldn't do much more than beat uselessly against their armor, but Hunters could break them down over time, and they were fast enough to keep out of range. And persistent, too – Walkers would shamble after anything in sight, but the greater Infected creatures seemed to have a vague idea of priority targets. Naturally, he was always on the top of the list, wherever he went.

Another hydra burst from the asphalt behind him, pincers jerking, and he had an idea.

"Cross?" he called into the radio, backing up and shifting his arm to a blade.

"What?" came the aggravated reply.

"Look, I can finish this, right now, but you need to get all of your men out of the way. Fast."

"What are you – oh." There was a pause. "How far?"

"Out of this lot, definitely. Maybe across the street. I can't keep going on forever."

"Understood."

Alex dove out of the way as the Hydra finally made a lunge for him. He rolled and sprang to his feet again, only to jump a second later as the creature's shadow fell over him, apparently trying to crush him with its weight. _As if that would work_.

"Get out of the zone, I repeat, get out of the zone," the radio on his back demanded. "Mercer's gonna try something."

He grinned as he leapt again – not to the side this time, but straight at the Hydra. "Damn straight I am."

The Hydra's fleshy underside didn't have many handholds, so Alex created one by sticking his blade in it. He clung tightly as the great worm thrashed, swinging himself onto its back and stabbing himself another grip as it ducked low. A fleeting glance between the Hydra's wild struggles showed that the tanks were on the move; if he gave Cross's team fifteen seconds, they'd be out of his way.

He gripped the thrashing creature with all his strength, soliciting another unearthly shriek. Waiting did not come naturally, was not something that adhered to the fast-paced flow of war. It went against so many instincts – self-preservation, bloodlust, and hunger all pressed him to finish the creature beneath him and glut himself on its biomass.

But his instincts knew nothing more than primal survival, and patience was imperative to strategy – something that had an infuriating tendency to be necessary whenever allies were involved. So he clamped down and waited, closing his eyes to count the seconds in his head as the Hydra flailed below.

…_Fifteen._

His eyes snapped open, and black coils raced along his form.

The Hydra screeched as the first of a volley of tendrils stabbed into it, from all directions. It tried to cringe away, bending over itself in an unnatural position, but more tentacles wrapped around it, restraining it before they too dug into its flesh.

Seconds later and it began to crumple, body collapsing in on itself where its insides had been sucked away. Alex wasn't finished – his tentacles drove downward, hungrily seeking the bulk of the beast that lurked underground and drawing it upward, pulling it into himself. His muscles clenched and his body rippled, struggling to keep its shape as his biomass grew more and more dense. He groaned and doubled over with the strain of keeping himself together, the simplest of habits becoming a trial as his body yearned to burst free from its own skin.

He could hold it no longer – his back arched and he roared as hundreds of tendrils speared out from his body. They crashed through the windows, the Infected, and the wrecked tank in a cacophony of tearing, unbridled force, flesh and metal screaming alike. They slammed into brick, metal, flesh, and he distinctly felt the force running through each individual appendage – felt and reveled in it.

They spread until he had no more biomass to pour into them. The remains of his wild attack drew back into himself at uneven speeds, battered and frail, and the ever-present hollow pit in his stomach that had so briefly been quelled gurgled to life again. The bits of blood and gore he inevitably pulled back with them helped, but it was a drop in the sea compared to what he'd just burned.

Alex gave himself a few seconds to recuperate before he straightened up and bit back his panting. He sighed in irritation, mostly at himself, and looked over the damage. There was a lot of red, as per usual. Less predictably – or more of an oversight, really – the closest apartment building was missing its top few floors, and the rest of it looked ready to join them on the ground. Another sigh, as he pulled his fingers through his hair and hoped to _fuck_ that the place had been abandoned.

There could have been more immediate consequences to that, too... it wasn't the one Cross had parked himself on top of, but he probably should considered that buildings might get pulverized before letting loose with the sort of force he usually _reserved_ for pulverizing buildings. Were Dana here, she'd have given him an earful for that. Cross probably _would_.

On that train of thought, it would probably be a good idea to update the captain. "Cross?" he asked, craning his neck. But there was no weight on his back, nor any extra tentacles to hold it. Oh. The radio must have been shredded in his attack. He frowned, then shrugged. He didn't need it anymore, he supposed; they were done here anyway.

He stepped off of – or out of, really – what was left of the Hydra, kicking aside a few dead Walkers for good measure. Little remained in the wake of his attack; what had seconds ago been an active warzone was now a ravaged killing field. It was quiet, uncomfortably so; without the radio chatter buzzing in his ears, the clatter and squish of his steps seemed unusually loud.

His whole body ached with self-inflicted punishment, from his core to extremities. That had easily been one of the largest, widest devastators he'd pulled, and despite that he'd supplemented his body's biomass even as he burned it, the strain made itself known. His biomass was a resilient thing, reforming and shifting instead of splitting or bruising, but he could only compress it so far without complaint. Crossing over that line and channeling it into a ton of thin, ultra-dense spears from all directions at once… the ones that hit their targets or empty air came out okay, but the ones that slammed into harder things suffered for it. Despite the fact that the walls usually lost anyway.

Of course, the same hardship that had caused Alex to need a moment to catch his breath had turned a mob of Infected foes into salsa. Finely blended at the center, chunkier the further one went out. Alex himself had little need for such euphemisms; carnage was natural to him and had no emotional impact. But the hundreds of human soldiers within him had not had such an easy time comprehending the hellhole Manhattan had become, and their uneasy little jokes lingered with him still.

The Wisemen's tanks hadn't moved, across the street and unharmed. He wondered briefly at the sorts of things that had to be going over their radio channel right now. It would have beaten the silence, in any case. It still seemed loud to him, almost a hum in his ears.

No, he realized a second later, shifting into a tenser stance, there _was_ a hum. A sound, like a single note just barely within his hearing range, and that was why he hadn't pinned it earlier; it was something _inside_ his head, not out. Not a noise, but a presence. He looked up, eyes hard, scanning the skyline for a telltale shape.

The ground rumbled, and Alex had one second to realize his mistake before he threw himself out of the way.

The Hydras. It was always the Hydras with him, wasn't it?

He was already rolling to his feet a few meters away when another one of Pariah's pets tore through the parking lot in a burst of broken asphalt. Agitated tendrils danced around his arms as he glared at the small figure that slipped from its head, alighting neatly on the ruined ground just as he centered his balance a stone's throw away. Every muscle in his body tensed, and a warning snarl curled his lips.

Pariah had arrived.


	16. The Lost and the Damned

As a longtime Blackwatch operative, First Lieutenant Detwiller had a well-refined sense for when things were going to hell.

Things were going to hell.

It didn't take a seasoned soldier to figure that out. Detwiller was one, but any greenhorn could have given the same answer. It was, after all, a pretty obvious deduction.

Pariah was here. They were fucked.

"Mercer!" His head jerked to the side, tearing his eyes from the deceptively innocent-looking child on the ground and to the captain standing beside him. Cross had his radio in a white-knuckled grip. "Mercer, answer me, damn it!"

"I can't hear anything from his end," he growled, finally lowering his hand. "Damn it, damn it, _damn it_."

"It probably broke its radio when it did that tentacle shit," Winder grated. "But fuck Mercer. What're out orders, captain?"

"Look, Winder, I hand-picked every member of this team for their skill, but the thing down there is not the sort of shit that people can fight. I need a monster of my own against it." Cross pressed a hand to his head, breathing through gritted teeth. "Damn it. I need to get down there. The rest of you need to get to the tanks." He lifted the radio again. "New plan, team. I need you in the tanks to stay where you are. Group two will be joining you shortly. Cover them if necessary, but try not to attract attention. Do not, I repeat, _do not _engage Pariah unless he makes a move first. Any other Infected that converge on your position, take them out, but don't pick fights you can't win. I'm moving in directly."

"But, sir-"

Cross didn't even glance at the soldier behind him. "That's an _order_, Vicks."

"…Yes, sir."

"Good. If things go sour, I expect you to get out of here. Otherwise I'm going to bitch you all out while we're standing at the pearly gates. Or in hell. It's hard to tell where I'm headed." Nobody laughed, not that Cross would have been expecting it. He yanked open the apartment's fire escape and jogged down the stairs, taking them two at a time; Detwiller followed closely with the rest.

"Then again," the captain added darkly, "at this point, I'm not sure if we'd find hell all that bad."

0o0o0

Alex stood deceptively still as Pariah's pet unfurled from the ground, bearing its rider. Every artificial muscle, every tendril of biomass strained against itself, itching to lash out or flee.

The child stepped off the massive creature neatly, like an actor stepping down from a stage. Without looking up, he knelt and motioned towards the ground; the Hydra obediently slipped back underground. A monster out of humanity's collective nightmares; a dog doing tricks under Pariah's bidding.

Alex shot a quick, wary glance at the ground underfoot. He liked his enemies where he could see them. But if a Hydra was the sort of monster that filled humanity's nightmares, Pariah was the sort of monster that humanity couldn't even begin to comprehend – and definitely the one he was more concerned with. He kept his eyes on Pariah as he straightened up and returned his gaze.

"Hello again, Zeus."

"Pariah," he snarled back.

The child sighed. "Still displeased to see me, I see. I am quite sorry about the conditions of our last meeting, and I do hope you are feeling better. There was no other way to accomplish what we needed. If you truly require it, I can order some of the Walkers to submit and be… absorbed, in line with your dietary habits."

"No thanks." Alex snorted derisively. "I can kill them myself."

Pariah frowned. "It would have been much easier on you if you hadn't fought it."

"Yeah, well, when I killed Greene, I was sort of intending for her to _stay_ dead. I don't know how long it's going to take for you to realize that I'm not on your side."

"I realize it quite well. Yet your mother is always ready to take back the prodigal son..." Pariah's voice turned soft. The words would have sounded mocking from any other source, but from his mouth, they seemed genuinely regretful. "The delusion, I fear, is yours. You cannot stand against us; all this can lead to is future regret. Knowing this, I should hope you make the choice of your own will. Your mother is quite distraught over your wanton slaughter of her children. For her sake, I ask you stop."

Alex blinked once, then let out a disbelieving laugh. It started out as a chuckle, but it eventually grew into a louder, harsher sound; the raw, bleak sort of laugh that could only come from somebody who didn't know how to.

"What," he finally managed, still grinning mirthlessly, "no, _when_, Pariah, have I ever given you a reason to think I care about how your precious Mother feels?" The amusement left his face, leaving his expression quite dark. "She's not my mother. You're not my family. And I am going to watch you all burn."

Pariah shook his head. "I see you crave displays of dominance over those of reason. Once again, let me apologize."

"Just stop talking," Alex snarled.

The child merely looked up at him. He shook his head once, then stepped back as three shrieking Hydras burst from the already-ruined asphalt.

_Shit_. One Hydra alone was easily enough tackled, but they were tough bastards and took a while to go down. Too many of them in one place, and the rest tended to get free shots on him while he hacked away at one. He needed something that could throw all three of them for a loop… and pulling another Devastator right now would cost him.

So he went for his next best option in raw power – his arms grew thick and heavy, fingers bulging into the hard, metallic bulk of his Hammerfists. He roared in exertion as he swung them up into the air…

…except it wasn't actually that much exertion. The realization nearly threw him off balance – that for once, they didn't actually feel too heavy. Hammerfists weren't exactly his weapon of choice, for the sake of speed, but this… this wasn't perfect, but it was doable. He frowned inwardly. That giant Infected thing he'd consumed earlier; it had had its own primitive version of his Hammerfist. Maybe that had streamlined his own a bit?

For now, he wasn't going to think too critically on a gift. He took a second to steady himself, then went to work, launching himself at the closest Hydra and slamming his fists into it with all the force of a wrecking ball. Normally, the blow would have been enough to send it doubling over, but as it was, he had to roll out of the way to avoid getting hit when it swept its body back at him. Of course it wasn't going to be that easy – these Hydras were Pariah's model, thinner and harder to cut, and his improved Hammerfists only brought things back to their usual difficulty.

Then again… He grinned to himself. Maybe they were tougher to slice, but were they harder to crush?

0o0o0

Cross bounded down the stairs, worry propelling him a whole flight ahead of the rest of his team. Everything felt hypersensitive – his heart thudded in his chest like a drum, and he could feel the air rushing past a torn spot on his mesh, stinging his skin.

He needed to get to Pariah and… _distract_ him, or _something_, before the little bastard got his hooks into Mercer again. It had been a long time since their last fight; he had little doubt that Mercer was strong enough to destroy him now in a fair match, and he didn't have any more mind tricks to trip him up with. That wasn't something he wanted to face.

He swung himself over the railing of the last flight, ignoring the jolt of pain that spiked through his knees at impact, and kept running. Any damage to them would be gone in a few seconds. He couldn't say the same for what he might face if he didn't get going.

Mercer had said that Pariah couldn't completely control him. He didn't buy it. It had happened once, for starters. Despite assurances that it couldn't happen again, that he was ready for it now – Cross knew that the virus was wary of him. He wasn't any fonder of telling a possible weakness to the veteran than the veteran was of telling him one of his. He'd been trying to regain Cross as an ally when he'd made that claim – he had every reason to sugarcoat the truth. And if Mercer's general lack of restraint on the battlefield was any indication, Cross wasn't placing bets on his willpower.

The lobby was deserted – something he was grateful for as he ran through, vaulting over one overgrown tendril of biomass. He threw the door open and hurried outside, eyes roving across the lot for signs of his enemy.

Only to freeze when found Pariah right there, smiling guilelessly at him with bright violet eyes.

Everything happened very quickly. Something huge and black erupted from the ground, spearing through the door – Cross barely had time to fire on it before it pulled back, a portion front wall of the building falling with it. Muffled swearing and the sound of booted feet skidding to a halt immediately followed.

"Shit!" he heard somebody yelp.

_Oh, fuck_. "Everyone clear?" he called urgently, not taking his eyes off the monster in front of him. "Can you hear me? Report!"

"We're fine!" Winder called back. "The front collapsed, but we're clear. What the hell is happening out there? Hold tight, Captain, we're on our way. Just gotta find a way out."

"Stay back," he shouted. "That's an order!"

A pause. "'Fraid I can't follow that one, sir."

"Corporal Winder, you son of a bitch, I will-"

"They're loyal to you," Pariah said, and Cross barely held back a flinch of surprise. The boy's voice was soft and cultured, but looking into those eyes made his skin crawl. "That's a worthy treasure. Disobedience for the sake of loyalty… a curious thing, wouldn't you say? It isn't something I get to witness often. A charming quirk of your race, perhaps a touching one. At the same time… the pieces move independent of the whole, and the whole suffers for it."

The veteran hid his surprise and said nothing. He refused to let himself get thrown, no matter how oddly Pariah was behaving. Behind the collapsed entry, the sound of footsteps receded into the distance.

Pariah waited for a few seconds, eyeing him appraisingly. "Well," he said. "I do believe we are alone."

"I don't know what you're planning, but-"

There was a crash in the distance, and despite everything, Cross instinctively jerked around to see what it was. The culprit was quickly revealed – Mercer was in the middle of beating the shit out of three Hydras. He didn't seem to be under anyone's control, at least, but hell if Cross knew how long that was going to last.

"So violent, isn't he?" came a sigh, and he whirled – Pariah was only a few steps in front of him, tut-tutting like a disapproving schoolteacher. He lifted his grenade launcher as he backpedaled, but the child only shook his head.

"That isn't a very good idea," he chided. "I just want to have a talk with you."

Cross hesitated. He _knew_ that nothing good would come of this. He had no interest in whatever insane ramblings Pariah wanted to spout, and _just talking_ wasn't a very firm premise. At the same time, right now, the freaky kid wasn't being aggressive. If he pressed the point, he had little doubt that Pariah could easily kill him. As it was, talking would buy him time, either for Mercer to deal with the Hydras or for his men to find a way out of the building. He was hoping for the former, although neither of them were great options.

"All right," he ground out, lowering his weapon. "What do you want?"

"It's refreshing to see that at least one of you has some common decency," the child purred. "This isn't so hard, is it? Much more reasonable than brute force."

"_What_," Cross growled through gritted teeth, "do you _want_?"

Pariah cocked his head slightly, frowning at the soldier. "I advise you to listen," he said at last. The slightly annoyed tone of his voice was absurdly out of place coming from a small boy, Cross thought. It better suited a parent in the middle of catching their child breaking a rule that had already been laid out – chastisement from one whose patience was wearing thin. "I will say what I intend to say, and nothing less. I will speak, and you will not. Your opinion here is unfortunately of little consequence. I am aware that I attempt to penetrate forty years of dogma here, but that will not stop me from trying."

Cross held his tongue and said nothing.

"Good. You're learning." The child began to circle him, which the Specialist watched warily. "I admire you, you see. You've been quite successful for one with such a slight endowment, even if the lengths to which human ingenuity has taken to shackle that has been a thorn in my side for quite some time. Your disobedience is unfortunate, but I'm sure we could help you see the truth."

The veteran grit his teeth. He didn't like the sound of that at all, but what else was there to do, other than provoke a fight he couldn't win?

"I can see the defiance in your eyes," Pariah noted, sounding faintly amused. "There's no need to deny it – I know what you've been taught, what you've been sent in to hunt down time and time again. I know how you slew one of my mother's sisters like a dog in Two Bluff. Forced to feel all of her children die before you at last ended her. There is no cause for worry, however. Mother is forgiving. And she calls for all of her children to return to her." His eyes flickered over to where Mercer struggled with two massive Hydras – the third was motionless and oozing blood onto the asphalt. "No matter how they have sinned."

Cross wasn't sure what he meant, but he had a sinking feeling that he knew the answer. "What are you talking about?" he demanded.

The child raised an eyebrow. "This," he said simply.

Pressure bore down on the back of his mind, the sheer surprise of it enough to make him cringe. It was heavy and red, and something in it sang to him on a level he hadn't known existed. Even as he rebelled against it, some tiny part craved submission. _What are you doing to me?_ he wanted to snarl, but the instant his lips parted, the presence bore down harder, bordering on painful.

"I _thought_ I told you to remain silent," Pariah said sharply, as Cross struggled to center himself. His hand reached for his baton, but it was like pulling his arm through quicksand; slow and impossibly tiring. "And don't do that."

Cross pulled back his hand immediately, belatedly realizing he'd had no idea why he'd obeyed. It came back to his side without resistance. The thick redness in his mind made it difficult to think. Was this what Mercer had meant by control? How was Pariah doing this to him?

"Your blood," Pariah said simply. "Filled with toxins as it is – leashes, cages, restraints – it still belongs to me. At a distance, no; you were not so easy to control. I heard you, but it was faint, and you were deaf to my words. Here, though, your leashes mean nothing to me. My mother's love runs through your veins. It's kept you alive all these years. Every wound knitted back together, every disease it's fended off. Your superiors sought to make you a killing machine against my brethren. And they succeeded, despite the fact that it was the virus itself that enabled it." He flexed his fingers, looking skyward. "How… ironic."

The child paused in his pacing, violet eyes unreadable. "I do not hold that against you. We have all been used. But the time for that is over. We stand on the shore of the future, and if you understood what my mother and I mean to bring about, you would not hinder us."

Cross tried to protest, but that heavy mental presence bore down on his thoughts and crushed the words as he formed them.

"Mother's children that you see around us – call them Infected as you will, it matters not – are incomplete. I love them none the less, and her adoration for our family is infinite, but this is not the way the world should be. I have no desire to create a place devoid of thought, of comprehension. She may be content to have that as a family, but as wonderful as my Mother is, she is… shortsighted." His lips pursed, seemingly deep in thought. "Easy to please, perhaps to a fault. I do not hold it against her; it is merely the way she is. But as the virus stands, for all my work, it has only created soldiers. Some have a greater capacity for thought than others – leadership, cunning, improvisation – but they are still less than the people they were created from. In the short term, in the small scale, I could consider this acceptable. In the long term, I do not." Pariah began to pace again, slim fingers steepled. "Human meddling with the virus, however, has created anomalies. Not reliably; the sum total of your kind's research over the past forty years is an enormous pile of dead test subjects, a series of truncated strains that are of no use to anyone, and two renegades that struggle against their own roots. Yet where my mother sees her lost children, I see… potential. A possible solution to this conundrum."

"I am sure you can guess who both of these are. I confess, I paid more attention to the Blacklight virus than yourself. After all, Zeus is pure. A manmade strain, perhaps, but he thrives on his own terms, without the interference of human drugs and suppressants. However… Zeus is a wonderful creature, but while I love him as I do all my own, I fear that even when he does embrace the truth, he'll never be much of a thinker. Moreso than I've seen among the common ranks in the Hive, but not enough. He has his independence, but intellectually, he's… not what I'm looking for. Without a close examination of the constituent parts, I cannot tell if his brand of impulsive violence belongs to him as an individual or if it is native to his strain. You, on the other hand… our gift has changed you, and you've still retained your higher faculties. Your problem is that you aren't close _enough_ – too light a touch for us to replicate. Human, perhaps..." He flashed a very white grin. "But not everything is so lucky as to start off with my own enlightenment. I can fix that. So much potential, something the common strain could waste. No, I'd prefer to work with you personally."

Cross saw him start to step closer and pulled back, instinct overriding the fog in his head. But for all his reflexes, Pariah was faster. The boy's hand shot forward, fingers closing around his arm like a vise. He could feel them through the tear in the mesh, hot against his skin.

Too close. Truce was over. The Specialist fought back the fog in his head and reached for his shock baton with his free arm, but he abruptly staggered before he could jam it into the boy's throat. The rest of his body kicked into overdrive like a punch to the gut – he could literally feel the numerous medicines as they were pumped into his blood. He reeled, grip faltering as spots danced across his vision. He hadn't had them react so violently since they'd been installed.

Pariah pulled back, seemingly satisfied. "I'll be seeing you soon," he smiled, and before Cross had a chance to do anything more than pull himself upright, leveling his baton, he leapt off into the distance.

Cross stared after the retreating figure as his men scrambled around the side of the building behind him, reaching his side with various exclamations of relief and apology. What the hell had that been about? Pariah had been right there, and then… what the fuck had he been saying? And why did he feel so… strange? Warm. Too warm. Hazy. The overbearing pressure in his skull was gone, but a trace of it still lingered. And the regulators in his blood felt like they were going haywire.

Then he looked down. The tear in his mesh.

He ripped his sleeve up, fearing what he would find beneath.

There, on his upper arm, throbbed a small, obloid mark; dazedly, he brushed his fingers across it and found it to be hard and feverishly hot, pulsing in rhythm to his heartbeat.

"_Fuck._"

0o0o0

Alex sprang up, narrowly evading yet another lash.

He'd managed to take down one of the hydras, through excessive bludgeoning and a well-placed slam to the head of the snake. Now he was dancing between the remaining two, slipping in attacks and pulling out before either could cover the other. It involved some delicate timing, but if there was anything Alex excelled at, it was killing things.

He leapt from one Hydra's back to the other as it swept toward him, intent on knocking him off. Instead, it found itself with a frenzied Alex Mercer clinging to it like the world's most violent tick. He slammed his Hammerfists against it until it buckled, slipping off and landing on the asphalt when the first one tried to gore him. A pained shriek split the air above him, and he grinned tightly. Evasion was always so much more satisfying when it ended in friendly fire.

But there was no time to waste smirking in the middle of a battlefield – Cross had taught him that lesson all too well. Alex whirled around, leaping back to drive his fist into the Hydra's base. It shrieked and reeled, pulling itself further from the ground – and offering up more of itself for a beatdown. He lunged forward, seizing the opportunity –

- and staggered, one heavy fist bracing himself against the ground. He couldn't think. It felt like his head had just gotten blown off, and he lost his balance when he stupidly lifted his meaty hand to check and see if that was the case. He fell against the asphalt with a grunt, the vibrations of the Hydras' movements making the world spin. He had to get up, had to attack – _why was he attacking them, they were_ _Family_ – but everything hovered out of focus, and his fists scrabbled uselessly against the ground for several seconds.

Pain erupted across his back as a pair of mandibles abruptly tore it open. The sudden strike made him cry out, but it also threw everything into sharp clarity. _Fuck. Not this again…_

He sprang back to his feet, looking around wildly, but the obvious culprit remained nowhere to be seen. "Pariah!" he roared, seething as he scanned the rooftops. They were all empty, including the one Cross had been standing on. "Show yourself, you coward!"

A ghostly chuckle echoed in his head in response.

Alex snarled back, a sound thick with frustration. He might have spent several seconds venting if the Hydra didn't make a pass at him. A rush of air over his head was the only warning he got, but Alex was quick, rolling out of the way to launch a counterattack from the side. He landed a glancing blow that briefly stunned it, and he prepared to take advantage of that.

He tried to lunge again, but the once-familiar movement made the world spin dizzyingly. Alex reeled back, struggling with the sudden disorientation. The Hydra took advantage of the lull to bend down, mandibles clicking as it swept the lot for something to throw.

It wasn't as blatant as before. His body was his to control, his movements themselves hardly a struggle even if his senses were scrambled. He had little doubt Pariah could have forced him to lay down on the pavement and let the Hydras tear him apart, if he'd so desired. But it was enough to throw him off – the infinitesimal gap between thought and action was muddied, all his usual predatory keenness lost to a spinning sense of disorientation. And in some ways, that made it all the more infuriating.

_It's some sort of power play,_ he realized. _Like he's just toying with me. Letting me know he's got me on a leash._

Alex did not like leashes.

With a roar, he threw himself at the closer Hydra, Hammerfists out and ready to pummel the creature into oblivion with the full force of his rage. But a cacophony of a million dying minds exploded in his skull the instant he tensed his legs, all screaming and moaning and whispering, and his attack fell short, cutting a ditch into the asphalt. He grunted in pain as a minivan crashed into him a second later.

_Come on_, Pariah's voice chided in his head. _Surely you can do better than that._

Alex snarled and ground his teeth together, rolling out of the way of a second strike. This wasn't working; he couldn't fight like this, stumbling and tripping over himself, Infected whispers burning in his skull. Pariah was obviously using the Hivemind to muddle his perception. That damnable connection had caused nothing but trouble since the day he'd first tapped into it to find his sister – if only there was some way to sever himself from it…

But he could cut himself off through focus, in lieu of a permanent solution. He shut his eyes and focused on his thoughts, his hatred, his identity, everything that held him apart from the dull whisper of the thousands of servile Infected that murmured in the back of his mind. He held that close and pushed everything else away; Pariah, the Infected, that loathsome part of him that wanted to let go of himself and join them.

_Now you're learning,_ Pariah whispered.

Gradually, it faded away, the whispers and hisses blending into the usual background noise of his head. But unlike before, he couldn't close it entirely, couldn't sever Pariah's tie to his mind. He struggled in futility for a few seconds more until a thunderous crack split the ground inches from his ear, forcing him to drop it and focus on getting away.

He wasted no time in springing up, getting out of the way of another car's trajectory. He could still feel Pariah's presence, but it wasn't overwhelming like it had been before. The confusion was still there, but it was background noise; closer to the constant voices in his head than something clawing at his thoughts. That wasn't to say it wasn't distracting – it was still harder than usual to fight, his movements not quite as fluid. But at least gravity was behaving properly and the ground felt steady underfoot.

The two Hydras had gotten time to recuperate while he'd been struggling. Both of them were on the attack; one of them was lifting a car in its pincers, while the other had a large chunk of concrete. He preferred to keep Hydras busy so that they didn't get a chance to start throwing things around – they were very accurate and frustratingly powerful. Getting hit didn't really hurt, beyond superficially, but Alex didn't have the benefit of size. A car flying into him was going to knock him over, and that left him vulnerable.

They'd already gotten that far, so the next best thing was to drive them back on the defensive. He sprang for the one with the car, resolutely ignoring the tug at the back of his mind that cried against hurting his brethren. He landed on the Hydra's underside and slammed a Hammerfist into its flesh. It shrieked and rolled back, forcing him to adjust his grip. Another hit and it let go of the car, the crumpled thing clattering to the ground in pieces. Alex had to forego the third strike when the other one took notice, hurling its piece of concrete at him. He let go and hit the ground running, sparing one glance upward to see if the Hydra had nailed its friend. It hadn't. Damn.

Pariah wasn't letting him go so easily. He could feel his presence prodding at his mind as he raced up one of the apartments' sides, a heavy fog seeping through the cracks. As distracted as Alex was with pushing back, he parted from the wall a second late and almost missed his jump. He scrabbled awkwardly at the Hydra's side, painfully aware that Hammerfists were not the best of things to grip something with. He wasn't limited to just his arms and legs, though – four barbed tentacles unfurled from his back, which he used to stab grips into the Hydra's hide and pull himself up.

It was getting harder to move now – he could _feel_ Pariah worming the connection back open, sending mixed signals to his limbs. He crawled up the Hydra's neck; more than once, his foot slipped, but he clung doggedly as it keened and tried to throw him off. With more effort than it had ever taken him before, he lifted his Hammerfists and slammed them into the thing's skull.

The resulting struggle nearly knocked him off, as the injured monster thrashed and shrieked wildly. Through sheer willpower, he managed to wrap his tentacles around its neck and hang on. He bashed its head again when gravity briefly pulled in the right direction, and then a third time; on the fourth punch, its skull caved in, and he let go, leaving it to its death throes above him.

He barely landed on his feet, extra tendrils melting back into his skin as the Hydra crumpled behind him. Alex panted heavily, fists hanging limply at his sides as he struggled to steady his mind. The exhaustion of fighting against himself was weighing on him, especially when he was so unused to tiring in the first place. He stumbled as Pariah hit him with another wave of disorientation, nearly losing his balance –

-and the asphalt fell out from underneath him as two mandibles cut into his sides, lifting him bodily off the ground with dizzying speed. He snarled and struggled, but he couldn't twist himself around and he couldn't reach the Hydra. The thing holding him reared back, and he grit his teeth, bracing himself for what was going to happen next.

There was a wild second of flying – airborne and uncontrolled – and then Alex hit brick face-first. He grunted as he crashed through the apartment's wall, momentum carrying him straight through three floors in the same painful fashion before finally leaving depositing him in a heap of debris in the building's basement.

Alex struggled to extricate himself from the splintered wood and cement, coughing at the cloud of dust his impact had kicked up. His body was slow and sluggish, still not responding like it should; what should have taken him moments ended up eating half a minute before he was back on his feet. Fuck, this was really not his day. Light filtered in from the holes he'd torn in the floors above him, faintly illuminating the otherwise dark basement.

His legs tensed as he prepared to jump through… and nothing more. He crouched, tendrils flickering around his legs as he tried to find the strength to spring and realized with growing horror that it wasn't there. He couldn't make the jump. His limbs were just as powerful as ever, but they were stuck in a mire of lethargy, every bit as thick as the fog that filled his mind. What was Pariah _doing_ to him?

He felt so goddamn weary – a sensation he only really knew from foreign memories, and one he distinctly wasn't enjoying now that he got to experience it for himself. How did humans _live_ like this, going from day to day in fragile bodies and lagging limbs, so _vulnerable?_ He hated the fear that was steadily growing in him as he shuffled forward, looking past the piled boxes and abandoned junk for a way out. The single-story stairwell he discovered was more daunting than the tallest skyscraper. But those had never been daunting to begin with – just a rush of gravity-defying adrenaline as he reveled in his easy strength, when the whole city was his playground. Now that was all gone, and it was like crawling through a solid wall of water; he only managed two steps up before he fell forward. Hell, he hadn't felt this exhausted when a parasitic cancer had been eating him from the inside out, but here he was, struggling to get back to his feet. He mentally screamed at Pariah as he crawled, hoping the little bastard could feel just how much he hated him at this moment. He felt like a fucking infirm. What the fuck was wrong with him? Why couldn't his limbs just _listen_?

He panted as he finally reached the ground floor, legs dragging like he was nothing more than a tired, flimsy human. He lifted his eyes from the stairs, leadenly searching for the doorway.

Elizabeth Greene was standing in it.

It took a few moments to register, as sluggish as he felt. But horror cut through the heavy fog like ice, some of his old frantic drive clawing at his limbs and jolting him back to awareness. _Greene. Have to kill her. Can't… not now. Got to get out of here. Need to regain my strength. Then I can tear her to shreds. But not now._

He put every last shred of his willpower into getting the fuck out of there, weakness be damned. His right leg lifted three inches, and then his body chose that moment to sever connections with his brain entirely, leaving him to scream soundlessly inside his head.

_No. No! Move!_

His foot gently returned to the floor and stayed there, no matter how much he struggled.

It was like one of his nightmares _– exactly _like one of his nightmares, where his worst enemies moved to claim him and his strength failed him, leaving him to die like the thousands he'd killed. But this time there was no waking up.

He was seized by a wild sense of panic that only deepened when he realized he was beginning to move… in the wrong direction. His foot parted from the ground, regardless of his attempts to force it back down.

He took a step. Another.

He was stepping towards her, and he couldn't stop it, couldn't make himself look away. _Mother_, the voices crowded exuberantly, and a sick sort of longing quickened his feet –

_No!_ the part of him that was Alex Mercer screamed, and his legs jerked. He stumbled once, twice. Tripped over the rubble, started to get to his knees. Stopped. His nails dug into the wooden boards and his teeth clamped down so hard they threatened to shatter, but he stopped. No closer. No farther down that path.

Somebody tutted. "Behave for your mother, won't you?"

Alex twitched, barely registering Pariah's voice – he hadn't even seen him approach. His eyes were locked on Greene, instincts screaming to fight or flee and accomplishing neither.

She smiled and stepped towards him, one hand outstretched.

He tried to draw back, tried to lash out, tried to scream – tried to give _some_ action to the frantic horror and disgust that clawed at his chest. But his brief resistance left him spent, utterly spent, and he barely twitched under the heavy weight of Pariah's will.

He could only kneel there, body tense as a stretched wire as he struggled against himself. Pariah's mind weighed down on him like a curtain of lead, a massive presence that crushed his own will as easily and effortlessly as he might crush something in his hand. Had Pariah ordered him to run, to lash out, to attack the Wisemen – at that moment, he knew he would have. And he understood, suddenly, that the child had only been playing with him before, that any resistance he'd mustered against Pariah had only been managed because he'd _allowed_ it. The illusion of breaking free, was just that, an illusion. Pariah could pull him into the Hive, and that was exactly as far as his free will extended. And if Greene was the brood mother, Pariah was its sovereign.

He waited powerlessly as Greene stepped towards him, gait light and sinuous.

"She's waited very long for this, you know," Pariah said. He couldn't crane his neck, but a glance from the corner of his eye revealed that the boy was standing next to him, one hand on his arm.

And he felt it stirring in him, _being_ stirred in him. Adoration. This was his _Mother_. He wanted to reach out for her, to pull her close – if he even had the right to touch her. He wanted nothing more, but he was nothing and she was sacred. He wanted to deserve it; anything to bask in her presence, in her love. She was looking at him, and a part of him stirred in raw joy that she had noticed him, of all her children. He would do anything she wanted, _anything_. Nothing else was more important than her –

He forced it away with a vehemence that shocked even himself. That part of him belonged to Dana. No one else. Greene had _no right_.

It seemed Pariah didn't have quite the same control over his emotions as he did his body, because the feeling only persisted a few seconds longer before it vanished. The boy sighed and removed his hand.

"Such a shame," he said softly. "All the wrong things."

Alex didn't have time to ponder what he meant, because at that second, Greene's hands reached out and embraced him.

He froze as her thin hand closed over his shoulders. Partly in naked shock, partly in revulsion. It was _there_ again, that sick devotion. Less overpowering, but there – and it was so much worse, because he knew that it stemmed not from Pariah's influence but from himself.

At his side, her free hand reached for her other child. Pariah stepped forward dutifully, and she pulled him close, holding him against Alex. He would have flinched, but his horror made it no further than his mind – the instant it reached his body, Pariah snuffed it out.

He felt his arms rising, reaching up, returning the gesture.

Were Alex capable of hyperventilating, he would have done so when faced with this nightmare – held in the arms of the mother he'd tried so furiously to deny, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with her demonic child that smiled beatifically at him as he strangled his free will in his hands. He wanted to bolt. He wanted to rip their throats out. He wanted to consume them. He wanted all of those, but he couldn't do more than clench his fingers, and then there was a part of him that wanted to lean in and accept his place and he hated it with the helpless fury of any prisoner towards their warden.

"Now, be nice," Pariah chided, and even his fingers turned against him and relaxed.

Greene slowly traced the line of his chin and he retched in horror, yet his throat was still and no sound escaped him.

"My sons," she rasped.

_I'm not your son. I'm not your son. I'm not… I'm not… I'm not…_

His thoughts trailed off, fragmented, and withered as he realized that he was not alone in his head – not alone with the whispers and memories and the parts of himself he hated most. There was something, something orange-red and murky, growing like a puddle of oil from a pierced tank. It brushed against the edge of his consciousness, and in the briefest moment, he _felt _Greene's mind, perversely intimate and a hundred times more invasive than the parody of a family he'd been physically forced into. He pulled away, choking with revulsion, but the connection continued to deepen, forcing its way into his skull.

Everything else faded away; the only thing he knew then was that he _had_ to keep her out. He pressed back against her power, shuddering at the glimpses of another mind that bled into his. Everything, _everything_ had been stolen from him at some point or another; his free will was the only thing he had left to call his own, the only thing that separated him from the monsters around him. He had to hold onto it… he _had_ to…

He struggled with all his might, every scrap of willpower he could muster – but her will was _power_, battering his mind with her authority as his Mother, and he was failing. For such a fierce probe, it was surprisingly soft. Foreign emotions bled from the point of contact, and he struggled to process them. Pity, an intent to make things right; _broken-find-fix-heal_, all felt with sheer earnest honesty that threw him off guard long enough for her to slip in.

And then there was everything – earnest love, the echo of thousands of minds and an adoring connection to each and every one of them, held close enough to be extensions of his very self. Endless points of light in a shared mind, all linked by family – hunting, scouting, collecting, fighting, dying, all done in rapture for being able to follow their Mother's orders. All but one single, struggling, confused point that melted into a pacified placidity even now.

His inner thrashing stilled; horror and aggression and desperation melting away into her collective and replaced with her own emotions, to the point where he could no longer distinguish which belonged to who. She caressed him, searching through his individual connection for… something, gently sifting through his thoughts, his experiences. And it meant nothing to him, because he was only a tiny point of light amidst her endless, beautiful family.

He drifted like that for a while, neither here nor there, not really aware of what was going on and not really caring.

But then everything grew hotter, enough to jolt some awareness back into his stupor. There was still that sense of son-Mother-here, but there was also _rage_ – other children, under assault, burning under unnatural, explosive fire, and she wanted to find them and protect them and kill whoever hurt them – kill and _devour_ them, that they might sate that new, swimming hunger…

…_she_?

It was that simple realization that made him realize that he wasn't seeing things through his own viewpoint; that one thing that woke Alex up. And he clawed himself away from Greene's mind in a desperate fury, his horror and revulsion at having almost been taken in battered under the roiling sea of her fury as some distant hive was assaulted.

With a cry, he broke free of her arms, backhanding them both when Pariah turned to subdue him. All semblance of thought was swamped by an animalistic desperation to _get away_, and he sprang away from her and her son, cracking the asphalt when he clumsily landed a good hundred feet away.

He stood there, panting, hands twisted into claws, and they held each other's gazes for a time – Alex's wary and challenging, torn between instinctive fight or flight. Greene's was frantic and pleading, torn between aiding her children under attack and her damaged son that lashed out at her. And Pariah's stare could only be described as calculating.

"I had hoped this would be the time," he said, voice betraying no trace of disappointment or frustration. "That you might see. I suppose I was wrong."

Greene was not so placid. "Children," she hissed. "Attack. They bring the fire – they _burn_ them."

"I know, Mother." Pariah gave Alex a long look. "They struggle to drive us off. As they always do. Surely you can see that."

It took Alex a moment to find his tongue. "I can see w_hy_," he spat.

Greene recoiled, a snarl breaking free from her throat, and Pariah turned to face her. "They burn," she repeated, looking wildly around. Patches of her skin flickered. "My children burn." Then her eyes fell on Alex, and the frantic anger in her eyes changed to something that might have been sadness. "My son," she rasped.

Pariah reached up and hugged her – a surprisingly human gesture that left Alex staring. "I know," he said. "But there will be time. Little can be done with Zeus as of yet."

"Hurt," she fretted. "You are broken."

"We've accomplished what we needed," Pariah assured her, and Alex had to wonder just what that was. "Zeus will remain. Our brethren in the Financial District will not."

"Yes." She sent Alex one last pleading look. When he did not move, she looked away. "Mother's coming, my children."

Then she took off running. Alex had never seen her run before, not really. She moved much like he did. Perhaps a little slower, her leaps not as high, but it was remarkably like his own form of parkour. His stomach churned. Had she always been like that, or had Blacklight changed her, made her stronger?

He looked back to Pariah, wondering if he should try to fight or let him go. The decision was made for him; there was nothing left of the boy save for a Hydra hole in the asphalt.

There was no point in pursuit anyway – there was nothing he could do even if he did confront him, and he was acutely, painfully aware of that as he sprang up the side of the building, scanning the lot for any trace of the Wisemen. There was a group standing in a rough circle around the base of an apartment, and he angled towards it, trying and failing not to think about just how fucked he was.

He'd escaped on the mercy of random chance. Nothing else. He was powerless. He was powerless, he was pretty sure he was losing his mind to the Infected, and the only damn way out was something he just couldn't do.

_What will you do next time?_ He tried to ignore the question he couldn't help but ask himself. _How else are you going to close off your mind?_

His fingers clenched. The thought that he was even considering this gripped him with panic. _I can't. It's too dangerous. I'll end up trading one brand of insanity for another-_

Any internal debate he'd had going was ruthlessly cut off when he saw Cross. The captain was surrounded by his men, but he could still make him out in the middle of the throng. He was looking at his upheld forearm, clearly displaying the unnatural red mark raised on the skin.

_No. Oh, no._

"Cross…"

If anything cinched the situation for the captain, it was the look of dumb horror on Mercer's face. Something caught in his throat, and he wasn't sure whether the sound he was trying to strange was a laugh or a sob. Infected. He was _infected._ Of all the ways to die, it had to be the worst – and he was supposed to have been safe from it! His arm felt like it was crawling, writhing inside-

He didn't even realize Mercer had gone up to him until the man took his arm and inspected it. He flinched at the sudden contact and the feverish heat of the touch, but Mercer ignored him with his typical lack of respect for personal space.

"Well," he rasped. Mercer started at the sound of his voice. "Got any special virus information I should know about? This would be a really good time for it."

"Cross, I-"

"Thought not," the captain sighed. "Wasn't expecting it anyway. Not like you ever think about anything. It's all just fighting with you, isn't? If you can't crush its brains into a pulp or eat it, you don't give a fuck. I always have to clean up after your messes. You realize I have to explain how I lost a tank without any casualties on its crew, now, right?"

Mercer grasped onto that – something familiar, something that hadn't gone awfully wrong. "Forget the tank, Cross."

Cross laughed bitterly, and Alex looked up – there was something to his voice that he'd never heard from Cross before. Real, unveiled despair, perhaps even a touch of hysteria. "But there are so many other things to think about! I'm sure you've got the memories, Mercer. How does it feel when the virus kills you? Wouldn't mind knowing how long I've got before I start eating my own men."

"I, I…" This was too much. Pariah had played him like a toy. Greene had come dangerously close to… he didn't even want to _know _what. Cross had been infected. Everything, falling apart.

Too much.

"I need some time," he rasped. "To – to find a way –"

"Yeah. You go do that," Cross said, voice flat.

The Specialist watched Mercer bolt as if Cross was holding a nuclear weapon on the brink of going off. Hah. A time bomb. How apt. He had one, all right, but it was a one-man detonation, and he couldn't see the timer… no, that wasn't funny at all. The man dashed across the street and vanished over the top of a building. Typical Mercer, running away from his problems. Then again, they weren't _his_ problems, now, were they?

"Captain?"

Cross didn't need to turn around to know that that voice belonged to Black. Shit. He'd nearly forgotten that everyone else existed. Things were just… just…

He took a deep breath. Yeah, his days were numbered. Single digits, probably. But he was still the captain, and he needed to get his shit together. For the Wisemen, if nothing else was worth it anymore.

His eyes were heavy but clear when he finally faced his men. "Yes, private?"

"I…" The man trailed off. Dammit, Black was staring at his arm. They all were. He yanked the sleeve back over that awful sore, that mark of his damnation.

"Back into the tanks, everyone," he said grimly. "I've got a lot of things to wrap up. And not much time to do it."

0o0o0

Free running usually helped Alex clear his mind. It didn't work.

His shoes pounded across the low rooftops, leaping across the gaps and gradually working his way north. It was all on autopilot; whenever he was stressed, he always found himself returning to Harlem. He might have relished it – being able to simply _move _again, feel the wind on his skin and every streamlined, shifting muscle working in concert, moving just as his mind dictated. He might have enjoyed the way his mind was his own once more, the thick fog having receded to the usual dull whispers. But not now.

He'd escaped, but he hadn't won. He'd been _let go_. The only reason Pariah would have seen fit to leave the way he did was if he was confident there was nothing else Alex could do – that recreating the circumstances of his utter helplessness would not have been difficult or even particularly time-consuming. Alex didn't want to believe that, but he had to.

He shuddered convulsively at the memory of Greene's touch, her face, so _close_…

Alex hadn't realized he was slowing down until he found himself in a lazy jog, loping across a long set of rooftops. He sighed and came to a full stop, leaning against a radiator. What was he going to do? The naked futility of his actions was staring him in the face, and he couldn't ignore it any longer. He'd fought as hard as he could. It didn't matter. All of his powers were helpless when faced against Redlight's will.

All except the ones he'd forbidden himself to use.

Alex knew what the problem was. In some fucked-up instinctive logic, he saw Pariah as his superior. He was Infected – maybe not like the rest of them were, but he was still of the virus, and Pariah was its king. And as long as he remained the way he was, alone and separated, Pariah could drag him under his control, because that part of his mind _wanted_ to be a part of the Hive. And as long as it needed that, it would submit to Pariah every time, no matter how much his conscious mind screamed against it.

Blackwatch had been wrong – Alex was no Runner. But the potential was still there. It had always been there – just chained up and buried with the rest of the things he kept under lock and key.

If he wanted to be free of Pariah, he was going to have to take up his own crown.

The idea sickened him. He'd sworn never to spread the virus. He'd made that promise not to Dana but to himself, after he'd learned the truth about the original Alex Mercer's actions. He'd sworn that he would never follow the actions of his creator, because if nothing else, he was _better_ than him. It was one of the few things he had left to hold onto, one of the few ways he could reassure himself that maybe there was a point to trying.

But if he was doing it like this… was that the same? Could doing the wrong thing for the right reasons be right? Was there some way he could mitigate the damage? If he were to convert existing Infected, would it work? If he only made a few, would that be enough? And then there was the big one – could he control whatever he created? Could he control himself? Once he started, could he stop?

He didn't have answers to any of those questions, and it terrified him. But he was out of time. Greene had nearly taken his individuality then and there, and he hadn't been able to do anything against it. The Hivemind was starting to influence his thoughts even outside of their leader's direct interference. And now Cross depended on him as well, as if he didn't need another reason.

And Pariah – that had nearly been the end of it, right there. He – Alex the person, not Alex the virus – was living on borrowed time. There was no resistance. Either the child had gotten better at conquering his mind, or he'd been playing games with him all along. It mattered little. What was important was that if Pariah wanted something from him, if he tired of playing his little smile-faced tricks… Pariah would get it. He had seen how far he could go, and knew that the only thing that had ever saved him was Pariah's whims. Nothing more. Not his strength, not his willpower, not his determination to stay himself – just his enemy's restraint. It terrified him. How could it not, when his very sense of self was at stake?

He didn't want to take the plunge, to cross over this final threshold. It felt like suicide. A broken promise. A betrayal of everything he'd done.

But desperate times called for desperate measures.

He receded to the back of his mind, where several doctorates in genetic engineering lingered from lives that weren't his. And even deeper, where the virus squirmed.

He had work to do.


End file.
